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How the World Discovered the Nazi Death Camps

(AFP) The Nazi concentration and extermination camps were liberated one by one as the Allied armies advanced on Berlin in the final days of World War II. The first was Majdanek in eastern Poland, freed on July 24, 1944, by the Soviet Red Army. Russian and Polish investigators photographed the camps at Majdanek and Auschwitz, and U.S. army photographers made a documentary on Struthof, the only Nazi concentration camp based in what is now France. But the images were not widely shared. France did not want them broadcast to avoid alarming people with relatives who were missing. A turning point came on April 6, 1945 with the discovery by American forces of Ohrdruf, an annex of the Buchenwald camp in Germany. The Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower, visited the camp on April 12, describing afterwards "conditions of indescribable horror." The Allied leadership decided immediately that all censorship should be lifted so the world could see evidence of the Nazi atrocities.
2020-01-23 00:00:00
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