Bidspirit auction | Rare Photograph of Dachau Camp

Rare Photograph of Dachau Camp Commanders and SS Men Escorted by Allied Soldiers Following the Liberation of the Camp - Rare photograph showing German prisoners, including SS men, being escorted by U.S. Army soldiers as they leave the Dachau death camp. Dachau, April 1945. Photograph by the U.S. Army Signal Corps, bearing the original archival registration number 207620, confirming that this is an official U.S. Army military documentary photograph. On the reverse of the photograph is a handwritten inscription in English: ”1945 German SS PRISONERS AT DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP, ” identifying the prisoners as SS men captured in the vicinity of the Dachau concentration camp upon its liberation or shortly thereafter. The camera captured a rare moment showing a long column of German prisoners of war, SS men, being escorted under guard by United States Army forces, with American military vehicles and armed soldiers, in the spring of 1945 following the liberation of the Dachau camp. Alongside the column are local civilians and former forced laborers, some pushing wheelbarrows. The photograph documents their transfer to imprisonment and trial during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, by the 42nd and 45th Divisions of the U.S. Army. Inside the fence, on the right side of the road, camp debris can be seen in large piles - these are in fact the remains of the facilities in which the prisoners had been held, dismantled by the SS in an attempt to conceal their crimes against humanity before the Seventh Army liberated the camp. Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, established as early as 1933, also served as a training center and major administrative headquarters of the SS. Upon the arrival of the American forces, hundreds of guards, officers, and SS soldiers who were present in the camp and its surrounding facilities were arrested and transferred to temporary detention facilities for interrogation and screening. Photographs of this kind, taken by photographers of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, were used both for intelligence and legal documentation in preparation for the war crimes trials and as part of the propaganda and information campaign intended to demonstrate the complete surrender of Nazi Germany and the dismantling of its machinery of terror. 10x7.5 cm. Very good condition.