Mislabeled photos from Nazi Germany

Mislabeled photos from Nazi Germany

A bunch of photos (shown as thumbnails) falsely claimed to represent Jewish victims of Nazi gassings/killings. Summarized from Udo Walendy.

Auschwitz victims?

Victims of mass murder at Auschwitz in the following picture? No, typhus-caused deaths at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Dead slave laborers at Nordhausen?

The May 21, 1945 issue of the Life magazine, among others, claimed that the following photo allegedly shows dead slave laborers from the Nordhausen concentration camp, and the causes of death were alleged to be starvation, overexertion and assault. However, the deceased individuals were victims of an Allied air raid.¹⁾

Nachtigall victims?

H. Bergschicker claimed the following victims to be of the Ukrainian nationalist battalion Nachtigall.²⁾ However, the victims are of the Soviet NKVD.³⁾

The shrunken heads of Buchenwald

The following heads were allegedly found by American troops after liberating Buchenwald.⁴⁾ However, the heads are South American and bore the inventory control number of a German anthropological museum.⁵⁾

¹⁾ M. Broszat, Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, No. 21, Stuttgart 1970, pp. 194f.; cf. U. Walendy, HT No. 34, 1988, p. 37.

²⁾ H. Bergschicker, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, Deutscher Militärverlag, Berlin (East) 1964, p. 150.

³⁾ K. Ziesel, Der rote Rufmord, Schlichtenmayer, Tübingen 1961, pp. 78ff.; cf. U. Walendy, Bild-“Dokumente”…, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 3ff.

⁴⁾ Shrunken heads, from R. Neumann, Hitler - Aufstieg und Untergang des Dritten Reichs, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1961, p. 183.

⁵⁾ Comment by Walendy: Perhaps they belonged to the Naturkundliches Museum in Weimar near Buchenwald, which does no longer exist. Its exhibits now belong at least partly to the Naturkundemuseum in Gotha. Personal communication of Peter Lange. Helmut Rehm remembers from the media coverage of those years that it turned out that these heads had an inventory number of the Anthropologisches Museum of Berlin Dahlem, personal communication. It certainly is worth exploring the Koch files to find out where these heads realy came from - and where they are now.