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Auschwitz liberated

Film | Accession Number: 1988.184.1 | RG Number: RG-60.0038 | Film ID: 6

This film was taken by a Soviet military film crew upon liberating Auschwitz in January 1945. CUs, children, showing numbers on their arms. The girl in the center of the frame not wearing a uniform but a regular jacket is Sarah Racimora. The boy to her right is Rene (Guttman) Slotkin. HAS, procession of children evacuating the camp, barbed wire. CUs, charred heads and remains of bodies in ovens. CUs, cans of gas and other chemicals. Corpses, including one woman with an embryo beside her. Piles of false teeth, razors, eyeglasses, and clothing. Soviet soldiers hold up some children's clothing. Piles of clothing, shoes, brushes, razor brushes, suitcases from various countries. Bodies in deep trench. Women weep beside grave. A band plays the funeral march. Choir boys follow the band. Many coffins are carried to large grave as hundreds attend ceremony. Priests and flagbearers. Women weep as the mass grave is covered. Doctors examine some of the survivors: an emaciated youth, children with bad feet, all evidence of brutality. The girl with mangled feet is Gertrude "Trudy" Mangel Spira. The Nazis forced her to stand in the snow barefeet for 13 hours as punishment for not doing her job as expected; Nazi doctors then amputated three of the toes in right foot as a medical experiment on pain in the human body. Still photographs of formerly healthy children are integrated in contrast to the ill conditions developed in the camp. More sick children, including Ruth Rosenbaum at 00:23:31, examined by Soviet doctors. Three men without shirts, woman. Medical board reviews sick child. Still photos of Nazis, including portraits of Richard Baer, Camp Commandant, and Karl Hoecker, Adjutant to Baer. Rolling credits at end: "Die drei Vereinten Nationen werden die Schuldigen bestimmt finden, selbst am grande der Welt und Ihren an klaegern ausliefern, um sie den Verdienten Strafe zuzufuehren. Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill. Aus dem Deklaration der drei Maechter."


Duration
00:11:50
Date
Event:  January-February 1945
Production:  1945
Locale
Auschwitz, Poland
Language
German
Genre/Form
Documentary.
Credit
Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration
 
Record last modified: 2022-07-28 22:05:42
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1000784