Bidspirit auction | Concentration camps and German prisoners

Concentration camps and German prisoners – What the American and British armies found, April 1945 - An early publication exposing the horrors of the death camps - “Deutsche Konzentrations- und Gefangenenlager – Was die amerikanischen und britischen Armeen vorfanden, April 1945” - “German Concentration and Prisoner Camps – What the American and British Armies Found, April 1945”. An early booklet documenting, through photographs, testimonies, and official reports, the crimes of the Nazis in the death camps - numerous harsh photos. A copy preserved in a prisoner-of-war camp: PW Camp Ruston, LA (Ruston, Louisiana), with an ink stamp from the camp. German. [Germany, 1945, no publisher]. Rare. An early booklet containing survivors’ testimonies alongside harsh photos taken by the Allied forces (American and British photographers) upon the liberation of the camps Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald, and other camps in Germany. At the center of the booklet appears in full the text of the official report published by the War Department on the Buchenwald concentration camp, detailing the manner in which the camp was established, the number of prisoners deported to it, the harsh conditions in the camp, the mortality rate, and an extensive account of how the machinery of murder in the camp operated, the structure of the crematorium and the way it functioned, and the various methods of extermination: forced labor, deliberate starvation, abuse, beatings and torture, unimaginable overcrowding in the camp barracks that led to disease, and more. Further on, under the heading: “Nazi Guards – Experts in Death, ” there appears a detailed account of the methods they used for torture and killing - difficult passages to read, describing, among other things, the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the camp prisoners as the Allied forces approached, in an attempt to conceal the evidence of mass murder, and more. “This booklet reveals some of the things that have recently been uncovered in Germany. Look at it with shock and revulsion. For years, opponents of the German Nazis told the world about the German concentration camps (the first of which was established 12 years ago). Many people refused to believe that things there were truly as bad as they had heard. Now the whole world knows. The spirit of Nazi cruelty, rape, and oppression prevailed there - and it is this spirit that ultimately united the world, which had initially hesitated, in the determination to crush Germany’s bid for world domination... Because of such horrors, which are part of the even greater tragedy of the war itself, the world is determined not to allow Germany ever again to become strong enough to commit such atrocities. This nation will require years to prove that it has broken the spirit that gives rise to such acts; then it may be readmitted into the circle of civilized nations” (from the booklet). Throughout the booklet are shocking photographs of prisoners who starved to death, bodies of victims after being tortured and murdered, the gallows in the camp, the crematoria of death, the crowded cells in which the prisoners lived, photographs of camp guards after being captured by the Allied forces, and more. The photographs and descriptions were intended for viewing by German civilians after the war, and accordingly the booklet was published in the German language. Among the photographs included: piles of bodies found by the Allied forces in the Belsen forest, an American soldier captured by the Germans and starved to the point of collapse, prisoners on the crowded wooden bunks in the Buchenwald camp, women and children in unimaginable overcrowding in the Belsen camp, a prisoner showing his emaciated legs to an American sergeant from the Ninth Army, various photographs of prisoners who were still alive when the Allied forces entered the camps but died shortly thereafter due to their weakness despite efforts to save them, prisoners killed by camp guards just hours before the arrival of the U.S. Third Army at the Buchenwald camp, German civilians from Weimar arriving at the Buchenwald camp under Allied orders to witness the atrocities committed by their people, the crematorium as it appeared to American soldiers, former prisoners demonstrating to General Eisenhower the various methods of abuse, mass graves in the Nordhausen camp, and more. Rare. Only a few copies listed in the WorldCat global library catalog. 30 pages. 30 cm. Minor losses at the corners of the cover. Cover reinforced with adhesive tape. Good condition.