In Black and White
Photographs from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1937–1945
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The CampThe Camp“An eery small-town idyll. The path along which the women and children are hurrying led directly past the standing train. But the women and children didn’t see the train, didn’t see the strange figures rolling out of the waggon doors (was it a familiar sight to them?).”
Fred Wander -
The InmatesThe Inmates“The sight that confronted us was indescribable. An endless square, full of figures in blue-and-white-striped uniforms, standing in perfectly straight rows. Huge floodlights lit up the square like a stage.”
Rolf Kralovitz -
The SSThe SS“They are quiet; they don’t shout. They inspect the work gang. Gods. Every button on their uniforms, every fingernail shines like a piece of sun. The SS radiate. We are the SS’s plague. We dare not approach the SS, dare not cast our gaze on them. They radiate, they blind, they reduce to dust.”
Robert Antelme -
The View from the OutsideThe View from the Outside“... for we were alive – living underground in countries under German occupation, in Germany itself, working in the factories or imprisoned in the dungeons and camps – in the decisive years we were living right in the midst of the German people.”
Jean Améry -
The Camp as EvidenceThe Camp as Evidence“I saw it and I smelled it. Yes, it was a building built specially for murder. You walk into a room and there is a row of ovens that look like heating boilers you see in large apartment houses.”
John Edwin Thierman, U.S. Signal Corps -
The LiberatedThe Liberated“One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.”
Elie Wiesel -
The PerpetratorsThe Perpetrators“SS men, soldiers, and Hitler youths wearing uniforms were constantly being brought in. The battlefield was covered with fragments of axles and the otherwise so highly treasured stars. Two SS men lay dead on the road.”
Das war Buchenwald. Ein Tatsachenbericht -
New PublicityNew Publicity“‘We didn’t know! We didn’t know!’ I first heard these words on a sunny afternoon in mid-April, 1945. They were repeated so often during the weeks to come, and all of us heard them with such monotonous frequency, that we came to regard them as a kind of national chant for Germany.”
Margaret Bourke-White -
BiographiesBiographiesGérard Raphaël Algoet, Georges Angéli, Günther Beyer, Margaret Bourke-White, Georg Brendle, Walter Chichersky, Rex L. Diveley, Adolf Dobschat, Buchenwald concentration camp records office, Karl Hänsel, Francis D. Killin, Eberhard Leitner, Armin Meisel, Ardean R. Miller III, Lee Miller, Louis Nemeth, Donald R. Ornitz, Éric Schwab, Alfred Stüber, John E. Thierman, U.S. Signal Corps, Willy van Heekern