The American newsreel United News reports from the Belsen and Buchenwald concentration camps on the atrocities committed by SS commanders and guards in the final days before the camps were liberated.
Historical background
In April 1945, the world was confronted with the horrific details of the Nazi atrocities committed in the Belsen and Buchenwald concentration camps. The Allied troops who liberated these camps encountered unimaginable scenes of suffering and cruelty.
In the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the liberators found over 60,000 living but severely weakened prisoners, many of whom were close to death. Conditions were catastrophic, with mass graves full of corpses piled outside the camp boundaries in a desperate attempt to get rid of the dead. The survivors suffered from extreme conditions of malnutrition and hygiene, and diseases such as typhus spread rapidly.
Similar horrors were discovered at Buchenwald concentration camp, where the liberators encountered a similar scene of horror. Survivors reported systematic abuse, forced labour and mass executions. The cruel experiments carried out by Nazi doctors, particularly in the field of medicine, left deep wounds in humanity.
The reports of these atrocities shocked the world public and strengthened the Allies’ resolve to fight the war to the end and defeat the Nazi regime. These events remain as a dark chapter in the history of mankind and remind us to preserve the memory of the victims and ensure that such atrocities are never repeated.