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Wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, child survivors of Auschwitz are led by relief workers and Soviet soldiers through a narrow passage between two barbed-wire fences.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 18016
Wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, child survivors of Auschwitz are led by relief workers and Soviet soldiers through a narrow passage between two barbed-wire fences. STILL PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE SOVIET FILM of the liberation of Auschwitz, taken by the film unit of the First Ukrainian Front.

Wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, child survivors of Auschwitz are led by relief workers and Soviet soldiers through a narrow passage between two barbed-wire fences.

STILL PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE SOVIET FILM of the liberation of Auschwitz, taken by the film unit of the First Ukrainian Front.

Date
1945
Variant Locale
Brzezinka
Birkenau
Auschwitz III
Monowitz
Auschwitz II
Photo Designation
KILLING CENTERS -- Auschwitz -- LIBERATION -- Survivors -- Children/Youth
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
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About This Photograph

Event History
The Soviet film about the liberation of Auschwitz was shot over a period of several months beginning on January 27, 1945, the day of liberation. It consists of both staged and unrehearsed footage of Auschwitz survivors (adults and children) taken in the first hours and days of their liberation, as well as scenes of their evacuation, which took place weeks or months later. The film includes the first inspection of the camp by Soviet war crimes investigators, as well as the initial medical examination of the survivors by Soviet physicians. It also records the public burial ceremony that took place on February 28, 1945 for Auschwitz victims who died just before and after the liberation. The order to make the film was issued by Mikhael Oschurkow, head of the photography unit, and was carried out by Alexander Voronzow and others in his group. Eighteen minutes of the film was introduced as evidence at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Another segment of the film disappeared for forty years before resurfacing in Moscow in 1986.

[Source: Alexander Voronzow interview, Chronos-Films, The Liberation of Auschwitz, 1986]

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
Copyright: Public Domain
Provenance: Dino Brugioni
 
Record last modified: 2018-02-08 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa10130