Children…

As British and American troops liberated the camps in Western
and Central Germany during the war’s final weeks, footage and
photos from them started circulating. Though the war lasted
six years, scenes like this one still shocked soldiers, their commanders
and civilians alike. On 29 April 1945, the Swedish
newspaper Expressen confronted the public with this photograph
from the recently liberated Bergen-Belsen camp. The paper
asked well-known Swedes and members of the public their reaction
to it. Some were deeply moved and expressed their horror.
Others refused to look at or comment at a picture they perceived
as “propaganda”. For decades, especially in the West, images
of such mass graves and the emaciated bodies of the living and
dead, symbolised Nazism and its consequences.
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