KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (196 page)

Georges Kohn, aged twelve, pictured here during medical experiments in Neuengamme, was hanged on April 20, 1945. He was one of countless victims of last-minute Camp SS murders.
(KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme)

A U.S. soldier outside a train full of dead prisoners, soon after the liberation of Dachau. The prisoners had departed from Buchenwald some three weeks earlier.
(USHMM, courtesy of J. Hardman)

Soviet soldiers survey burned bodies at the Klooga satellite camp in Estonia. On September 19, 1944, shortly before the Red Army arrived, the SS had slaughtered the inmates and torched the camp.
(USHMM, courtesy of Esther Ancoli-Barbasch)

Dachau prisoners welcome U.S. troops on April 29, 1945 (photographed from a watchtower).
(USHMM, courtesy of
The New York Times
)

The liberation of a Bergen-Belsen death train near Magdeburg, April 13, 1945
(USHMM, courtesy of Dr. Gross)

Bergen-Belsen on April 18, 1945, three days after the arrival of British forces. Thousands of survivors died here in the following weeks.
(Imperial War Museums, London)

Young survivors cook a meal in the Ebensee satellite camp two days after the May 6, 1945, liberation.
(USHMM/U.S. National Archives)

Survivors of Buchenwald leave the Weimar train station for a children’s home in France, June 1, 1945. One youth writes on the carriage: “Where are our parents? You murderers.”
(Gedenkstätte Buchenwald)

The execution of Rudolf Höss on the grounds of the former Auschwitz main camp on April 16, 1947
(Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warsaw, GK-14-4-6-11)

U.S. soldiers confront Weimar civilians with corpses near the Buchenwald crematorium, April 16, 1945—one of many explicit images to appear in the Allied press.
(Gedenkstätte Buchenwald)

Postcard of Dachau as a residential settlement for refugees, circa 1955–60. Next to the main road (bottom, right) are the former prisoner barracks used as apartments.
(KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau)

A Note About the Author

Nikolaus Wachsmann
is a professor of modern European history at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of the prizewinning
Hitler’s Prisons
and joint editor of
Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories
. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

ALSO BY
NIKOLAUS WACHSMANN

Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany

The Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933–1939: A Documentary History
(joint editor)

Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories
(joint editor)