The photograph was taken after the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp by U.S. troops on April 29, 1945. It documents the crimes committed in the first Nazi concentration camp, in which more than 40,000 people lost their lives between 1933 and 1945. Photographs such as this were recorded by the Allied forces as evidence of Nazi crimes and were later used, among other purposes, in the Nuremberg Trials. They serve as a reminder to commemorate the victims.