War crime

War Crimes Commission: Concentration Camps - Prosecution Exhibit #230 (1945)

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Title: Nazi Concentration Camps -- Prosecution Exhibit #230 Event Date: 1945 Place: Arnstadt, Germany | Belsen, Germany | Breendonck, Belgium | Buchenwald, Germany | Dachau, Germany | Hadamar, Germany | Leipzig, Germany | Mauthausen, Austria | Nordhausen, Germany | Ohrdruf, Germany | Penig, Germany Description: There are breaks between reels. The film begins with titles and affidavits attesting to the authenticity of the film material to follow. A quote from Robert Jackson is followed by affidavits from George Stevens and E. R. Kellogg. Both affidavits are shown on the screen as they are read aloud. An animated maps shows the locations of the largest prison and concentration camps in Germany and occupied Europe. 01:04:27 Title on screen: "Leipzig Concentration Camp" [Leipzig-Thekla, a sub-camp of Buchenwald]. Long shots of the camp while the narrator tells of the political prisoners who were burned to death or shot there. Former prisoners tell the story of the atrocity to an American soldier. Close-ups of a prisoner who burned to death while the narrator says that 200 starving prisoners were lured into a wooden buidling which was then set on fire. Bodies of those electrocuted on the fence as they tried to escape -- gruesome shots. Russian women, liberated from slave labor, view the corpses. 01:05:42 Title on screen: "Penig Concentration Camp" [a sub-camp of Buchenwald]. Exteriors and interiors of the camp. Female Hungarian prisoners. American medics examine the survivors, who are very ill. American soldiers remove ill people from barracks with stretchers. The survivors are taken to a hospital formerly used by the Luftwaffe, where Nazi doctors are ordered to treat them. Women survivors smile up from their stretchers. 01:09:11 Title on screen: "Ohrdruf Concentration Camp" [a sub-camp of Buchenwald]. Americans talk with camp survivors. Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton tour the camp. They see torture devices, corpses. The narrator quotes Eisenhower's statement to the congressional delegation that toured the camp. Eisenhower views the crematory made from railway tracks. "Prominent Nazi party members" and a "Nazi medical Major" arrive on a truck and are forced to tour the camp with Colonel Hayden Sears. The Nazis are forced to enter the woodshed to view the corpses. The "medical Major" is especially reluctant to enter. The Nazis listen to a recitation of the atrocities committed at Ohrdruf. According to the narration, they denied all knowledge of what happened there. 01:15:11 Title on screen: "Hadamar" Major Herman Bolker examines survivors at the Hadamar euthanasia facility. Men exhume bodies from the cemetery at Hadamar. Men wearing gas masks remove decomposing corpses from graves. Major Bolker performs the autopsies out of doors. Dr. Adolf Wahlmann, chief physician at the facilty, and Karl Willig, a nurse, are interrogated by American soldiers. Wahlmann inspects a bottle of morphine, which was used to kill patients. 01:20:12 Title on screen: "Breendonck" Views of the camp (in Belgium). A former prisoner demonstrates how prisoners would be tied up and beaten with a stick covered in barbed wire. Former inmates demonstrate other methods of torture and show their scars. 01:22:49 Title on screen: "Hannover Concentration Camp" [a sub-camp of Neuengamme]. Former prisoners walk around the grounds of the Hanover-Ahlem camp. They are served food provided by the Red Cross. Shots of men eating soup. Interior shots of men too weak to leave their bunks. Corpses of men who died after the arrival of the Americans. Shot of a photographer posing a group of survivors against a barracks. Language: English Genre: Documentary Biography / History: "Nazi Concentration Camps" was compiled as evidence and shown at the Nuremberg Trials as Prosecution Exhibit #230. The film was produced for the U.S. Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality in 1945. It was directed by Navy Cmdrs. James B. Donovan and E. Ray Kellogg. George C. Stevens was responsible for directing the photography and filming of the concentration camps as liberated by Allied forces. The film has also been called "Concentration Camps in Germany, 1939-1945". Director: Navy Cmdr. James B. Donovan; Navy Cmdr. E. Ray Kellogg; George C. Stevens Producer: US Army Signal Corps Production Date: 1945 Source: National Archives & Records Administration (NARA), 238.2 R1-6