Two rare photos showing prisoners at morning roll call upon arrival at the Ohrdruf concentration camp. In one prisoners are seen standing in rows, in the other, after being dispersed to work. The photos are described on the back in handwriting. One: Morgenbestellung Ohrdruf Lager Januar 1945 – Ohrdruf morning roll call January 1945. And the second: Ohrdruf Lager 1945 – Ohrdruf camp 1945. Both photos are numbered on the back and marked with swastikas – apparently taken by the Nazis themselves. The Ohrdruf concentration camp was the first Nazi death camp liberated by the Allies.
The Ohrdruf concentration camp was established in November 1944 in the town of Ohrdruf in Germany, located about 100 kilometers south of Berlin. Many of the prisoners in Ohrdruf were Soviet prisoners of war, as well as Jews, Poles and other “undesirables”. The prisoners in the camp were slave laborers who served as a labor force for the construction of a railroad leading to an underground communications center whose construction was never completed, due to the rapid advance of American forces. Conditions in Ohrdruf were dire. Prisoners were forced to work long hours under harsh conditions, and were often subjected to torture and abuse. Many prisoners died of starvation, disease or overwork. At the end of March 1945, the camp population numbered about 11,700 prisoners, but in early April SS death’s head units evacuated almost all the prisoners on death marches to the Buchenwald camp. SS men killed many of the prisoners who remained in the camp because they were too ill to embark on the march. The camp was liberated on April 4 by the US Army’s 4th Armored Division and 89th Infantry Division. When armored division soldiers entered the camp they discovered piles of corpses, some covered in lime, and another group of corpses partially burnt. The horrific discovery of the corpses brought General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, to visit the camp on April 12. Accompanying him were Generals George Patton and Omar Bradley. After his visit, Eisenhower sent a telegram to General George Marshall, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, in which he described what he saw during his visit to the camp. He wrote that the cruelty and bestiality were so powerful that it left him sick. According to him, General Patton did not want to enter to see, but he persuaded him to visit the camp so that he and the other generals who visited the camp could testify firsthand in the future about the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews, and to prevent people from calling what had happened as Jewish propaganda. The impact of the sights in the camp was so strong that on April 19, 1945 Eisenhower sent a request to Marshall to send a delegation of Congressmen and journalists to come see and bring the Nazi atrocities to the attention of the American public. The delegation was approved that day by US President Harry Truman. The Ohrdruf concentration camp was the first Nazi death camp liberated by the Allies.
Photos of prisoners in camps taken by the Nazis themselves are extremely rare, since most were destroyed by the Nazis themselves before the end of the war.
Same size: 9×14 cm. Divided on back for use as postcards. One photo is cracked on the upper left side, and reinforced on the back with adhesive glue. Good condition.
