The images captured when the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps towards the conclusion of World War II brought the atrocities of the Holocaust to the forefront of global awareness.
Initially, many of the horrific photographs were withheld from the general public, partly in consideration of those with missing loved ones.
One by one, the concentration and extermination camps were liberated as Allied forces approached Berlin during the final days of the 1939-1945 conflict.
The first camp liberated was Majdanek, located near Lublin in German-occupied eastern Poland, where the surviving prisoners were freed by the Soviet Red Army on July 24, 1944.
‘Death marches’
In June 1944, SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the evacuation of several camps before they could be overrun by Allied forces, with prisoners to be relocated to other facilities.
SS officers were instructed to eliminate all evidence of their crimes prior to escaping.
The expansive Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in southern Poland, the largest concentration camp, was systematically dismantled beginning in mid-1944, while 60,000 malnourished prisoners were forced onto “death marches” to other camps.
A group of child survivors behind a barbed wire fence at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland, on the day of the camp’s liberation.
When Soviet troops arrived on January 27, 1945, only 7,000 prisoners remained, primarily those who were unable to walk with the others.
Images not widely shared
The initial discoveries of the camps had minimal impact on the broader public, as the images were not widely disseminated.
Investigators from Russia and Poland documented the conditions at Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau, while American military photographers produced a documentary about Struthof, the only Nazi concentration camp situated in what is now France.
French authorities, particularly, sought to prevent the circulation of these images to avoid distressing families with missing relatives who had been deported, captured, or conscripted.
Concentration camp victims are led through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp gate in 1945.
A pivotal moment occurred on April 6, 1945, with the discovery of the Ohrdruf concentration camp, an annex of Buchenwald in Germany.
‘Indescribable horror’
When American forces – alongside US war correspondent Meyer Levin and AFP photographer Eric Schwab – entered Ohrdruf, they encountered a still-burning inferno and skeletal prisoners being executed.
Shoes discarded by men, women, and children at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower, visited the camp on April 12 and later described the “conditions of indescribable horror.”
Read more: Auschwitz: Where the Nazis created hell on earth
In response, the Allied leadership swiftly decided that all censorship should be lifted so that the world could witness the evidence of Nazi atrocities.
Days later, Eisenhower stated that journalists should visit the camps “where the evidence of bestiality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubt in their minds about the normal practices of the Germans.”
