Nazi Concentration Camps (film)

Nazi Concentration Camps, also known as Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps,^[a] is a 1945 American film that documents the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by Allied forces during World War II. It was produced by the United States from footage captured by military photographers serving in the Allied armies as they advanced into Germany. The film was presented as evidence of Nazi war crimes in the Nuremberg trials in 1945,^[2] and the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961.^[3]

In 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower requested that film director George Stevens organize a team of photographers and cameramen to capture the Normandy landings and the North African campaign. The group of forty-five people assembled was dubbed the Special Coverage Unit (SPECOU), or "Stevens Irregulars" informally.^[4] The use of the footage as evidence in a war crime trial was not initially contemplated; however, on 25 April 1945, Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) issued a memo directing Signal Corps cameramen to take complete still and motion pictures of the camps. The memo suggested the potential use of this footage as evidence for the Judge Advocate General War Crimes Commission.^[5]

The film was presented in the courtroom on 29 November 1945 and entered as evidence in the trial. It includes extremely graphic scenes and shocked both the defendants and the judges, who adjourned the trial.^[6][7] The film, approximately one hour in length and spread over six reels, comprises 6,000 feet of the 80,000 feet of film shot by both American and British cameramen. The film contains footage from the liberation of twelve camps in Austria, Belgium, and Germany: Leipzig, Penig, Ohrdruf, Hadamar, Breendonk, Hannover, Arnstadt, Nordhausen, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Belsen.^[8]

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