Videos from shortly after the liberation of KZ Flossenbürg#
(LIB 6223) Probably April 30, 1945. Camera pans from left to right showing an overview of the Flossenbuerg slave labor camp, barracks on hillside, trees and mountains in BG. German civilians gathered at entrance to camp. Inscriptions on concrete gate post. Sign: “Vorsicht! Hochspannung Lebensgefahr” and “Arbeit Macht Frei”. CU, electrified barbed wire around top of fence and guard towers. Makeshift handwritten banner on picket fence, “Prisoners Happy End! Welcome!”. INT, CU, four naked male survivors: two Jewish, one French, one Polish, with numbers tattooed on their chests. Multiple takes. Pan down to feet (2 have striped uniform pants pulled down). CU survivor’s emaciated backside. 02:44:59 SEQ: Former French prisoner in the camp conducts U.S. soldier through underground crematorium (entrance to underground through metal grate). View of camp. Survivors (in regular clothes) splitting and stacking wood. CU “Disinfektion” painted on brick wall. Disposing of hot ash from crematorium into nearby pit. Americans and civilians dig up dead bodies of slave laborers, killed during the death marches, all are clothed. VCU, dead. Three older male civilians talk to soldier. More corpses are dug up and laid side by side in rows. Various CUs, including a bloody chest and a prisoner uniform with a triangular patch and a necklace with a cross.
(LIB 6355) May 4, 1945. View of concentration camp buildings. CU, sign, “Zugang zu den Krankenbaracken” with figurines. Barbed wire fence and guardtower surrounding Flossenbuerg slave labor camp. CU, bullet-marked and blood-smeared wall - the scene of executions in the camp. INTs, barracks/living quarters, dead prisoners. Steel grating over open pit, crematorium in pit enclosed by high stone wall. Charred bones of cremated victims of the camp. MS, horse-drawn carriage carrying caskets past concentration camp buildings.
Slachtoffers Dodenmarsen#
(LIB 5968) Schwarzenfeld, Germany. LS of many coffins loaded onto horse-drawn carts. German civilians from Schwarzenfeld unload and carry the coffins, walking past rows of corpses. Many civilians dig graves in a fenced area. The remains of a striped uniform are visible on at least one of the bodies awaiting burial. Houses are visible in the background. The victims died while on one of several evacuation transports from Flossenbuerg, en route to Dachau. On April 16th, a transport of some 1700 Jewish prisoners left Flossenbuerg. Near Schwarzenfeld, their train was strafed and destroyed by Allied planes, killing some of the prisoners, and more were shot by the SS. An estimated 7,000 prisoners died while on evacuation transports from Flossenbuerg. Mass graves continued to be discovered in this area until the late 1950s.
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