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... PAINT PORNOGRAPHIC PICTURES ON CANVASSES MADE OF HUMAN SKIN

Bodies stacked one upon the other were found outside the crematory. The Nazis maintained a building at the camp for medical experiments and vivisections with prisoners as guinea pigs. Medical scientists came from Berlin periodically to reinforce the experimental staff. In particular, new toxins and anti-toxins were tried out on prisoners. Few who entered the experimental buildings ever emerged alive.

One of the weapons used by SS guards.

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The body disposal plant. Inside, are the ovens which gave the crematorium a maximum disposal capacity of about 400 bodies per 10-hour day. Gold-filled teeth were extracted from bodies before incineration. The ovens, of extremely modem design and heated by coke, were made by a concern which customarily manufactures baking ovens. The firm's name is clearly inscribed.

All bodies were. finally reduced to bone ash.

Twelve hundred civilians walked from the neighboring City of Weimar to begin a forced tour of the camp. There are many smiling faces and, according to observers, at first the Germans act as though this were something being staged for their benefit.

One of the first things that the German civilians see as they reach the interior of the camp is the parchment display. On a table for all to gaze upon is a lampshade made of human skin, made at the request of an SS officer'. wife. Large pieces of skin have been used for painting pictures, many of an obscene nature.

There are two heads which have been shrunk to one-fifth their normal size. These, and other exhibits of Nazi origin, are shown to the townspeople.

The camera records the changes in facial expressions as the Weimar citizens leave the parchment display.

The tour continues with a forced inspection of the camp's living quarters, where the stench, filth and misery defied description.

They see the result of lack of care in it bad case of trenchfoot. Other evidences of horror, brutality and human indecency are shown and these people are compelled to see what their own government had perpetrated.

Correspondents assigned to the Buchenwald story have given wide notice to the well-fed, well-dressed appearance of the German civlian population of the Weimar area.

IMT XXX

469

Narration of film "Nazi Concentration Camps", made by George Stevens
23rd November 1945