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Belsen liberation, atrocities

Film | Digitized | Accession Number: 1988.184.1 | RG Number: RG-60.0360 | Film ID: 158

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    Belsen liberation, atrocities
    Image

    Overview

    Description
    Sequence of Bergen-Belsen at liberation from the pre-completed and pre-restored version of "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey," formerly known as “Memory of the Camps,” transmitted by WGBH/PBS FRONTLINE in May 1985 with commentary specially recorded by the actor Trevor Howard. Narrator's voice is not heard throughout.

    Belsen sign; child survivors behind barbed wire with Luba Tryszynska; eating; emaciated survivors. 06:28:25 Woman (Mrs. Rosalie Weisner) kneels to kiss the hand of a British soldier on the day of liberation (April 15, 1945). Corpses; burials at Belsen; British soldiers; mass pits; women screaming at SS soldiers. Laboratory; school children running into SS Panzer training school. Women eating, getting dressed, combing hair. Interviews with survivors. CU of female bodies (very mangled). Bulldozing bodies; blasting with fire.
    Duration
    00:16:20
    Date
    Event:  April - May 1945
    Production:  1945
    Locale
    Bergen-Belsen, Germany
    Credit
    Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Imperial War Museums
    Contributor
    Narrator: Trevor Howard
    Subject: Luba Tryszynska-Frederick
    Biography
    Luba Tryszynska, a Jewish woman from White Russia, near Brest-Litovsk, probably Kaments-Litovsk, who lost her husband Hersch and three-year old child Isaac at Auschwitz, was transferred from Auschwitz in November 1944 to Bergen Belsen, and began caring for children with permission of the camp doctor and of SS officials in December 1944. Beginning with a group of Dutch Jewish children, the “diamond” children, whom she found outside her barrack one night, but not limited to these, she and Hermina Krantz, a Jewish woman from Slovakia, also transferred from Auschwitz, were placed in charge and cared for ninety orphaned children from less than one-year old to twelve years old.

    Luba played the provider – she went all over the camp getting provisions, collecting, and winning help from some guards, who provided wood, bread, and occasionally milk. Hermina was the manager – she scrubbed the floors, washed the children, cooked and fed them. They were able to establish a regular routine, with meals at 7 am, 1pm, and 7 pm. Hermina boiled the children’s underclothes, seeking thereby to shut out the typhus that began ravaging the camp. Ultimately, nonetheless, about thirty of the children were infected. There are indications that the women had help from friendly SS guards and even received provisions for the children from women SS guards. Right until liberation, Luba and Hermina kept the orphaned children’s hut intact and the children sheltered from the worst that occurred in the camp.

    After liberation, Luba became the manager of the new children’s home under British direction, and Hermina became the chief cook. Later, Luba accompanied children back to Holland and then other children to Sweden, before she herself came to the United States. When she arrived in the United States and became an American citizen, it was noted that “the Angel of Belsen” had become a citizen. Found by some of the diamond children many years later, Luba was honored by the Queen of Holland and the mayor of Amsterdam. A recent children’s book by Michelle R. McCann about “Luba, The Angel of Belsen” has won numerous prizes, including a National Jewish Book Award.

    In the Yizkor book for Kamenets-Litovsky, Belarus, a story about “the Angel of Belsen” states she was moved to Belsen in summer, 1944 and, as a nurse, she had some advantages. She concealed the small triangle beneath the identification number tattooed on her left arm, she passed herself off as a Russian, and she was placed in a nursing shack at the camp. There, one night, outside, she discovered the children of the diamond Jews of Holland, who had been separated from their parents and brought to Belsen. She pleaded the case with Dr. Klein, the doctor from Auschwitz. She’d keep them out of the way – Klein agreed to give her a barracks and put her in charge of the children. She had 94 children – Dutch Jews, Polish Jews, and Russians. The children were fed and kept indoors. When the British arrived, they were amazed to find 94 children alive in one barrack presided over by Luba Tryszynska (she was 28 years old). Later she accompanied 64 Dutch children home, and the other children to Sweden, who were in turn adopted in Sweden and Finland. In Sweden, Luba Tryszynska married Sol Frederich, whom she met in a DP camp. He had spent five years in Oswiecim, but she did not know him there. He had relatives in the United States. They immigrated.

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Documentary.
    B&W / Color
    Black & White
    Image Quality
    Good
    Time Code
    06:27:23:00 to 06:43:43:00
    Film Format
    • Master
    • Master 158 Video: One Inch - NTSC
      Master 158 Video: One Inch - NTSC
      Master 158 Video: One Inch - NTSC
      Master 158 Video: One Inch - NTSC
    • Preservation
    • Preservation 158 Video: Betacam SP - NTSC - large
      Preservation 158 Video: Betacam SP - NTSC - large
      Preservation 158 Video: Betacam SP - NTSC - large
      Preservation 158 Video: Betacam SP - NTSC - large

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    This archival media can only be accessed in a Museum reading room or other on-campus viewing stations.
    Copyright
    Imperial War Museums
    Conditions on Use
    For licensing enquiries and requests, contact Imperial War Museums (IWM) at filmcommercial@iwm.org.uk. IWM also offers limited services for non-commercial parties, such as for museums, armed forces, veterans and their immediate family, family history researchers, and students. For such purposes, contact film@iwm.org.uk.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Film Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum purchased the collection from various sources in 1988. Footage was obtained as research for the United States Holocaust Memorial Campaign's promotional video called "A Campaign to Remember" by David Haspel & Associates.
    Note
    See also Story 2597 and 2598, Film ID 1000 where the film was screened in part as a Welt im Film newsreel, issue no. 5.

    Mrs. Rosalie Weisner identified by her daughter Jolly Zeleny who also survived Belsen. See correspondence in departmental files from Joan Ringelheim.

    Luba Tryszynska, The Angel of Belsen, appears at 06:27:47

    Film Summary: "F3080" was the name given to a project to compile a documentary film on Nazi atrocities the liberation of the German concentration camps. In 2014, the IWM completed a new restoration of this film, now called"German Concentration Camps Factual Survey." The project originated in February 1945 in the Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force). Sidney Bernstein, chief of PWD's Film Section, began preparations for producing a film using material shot by the service and newsreel cameramen accompanying the British, American, and Russian armies. As the Allied forces advanced in the final weeks leading up to the German surrender, cameramen of the British Army Film Unit and of the American Army Pictorial Service began to make a systematic record of the newly liberated concentration camps. By early May 1945, the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information began collaborating on the collation and rough-cutting of the film material. During that summer of 1945 some of the editing was done under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock. Five of the film's six reels survived in a 55-minute fine-cut print without titles or credits. In 1952 the five reels, together with an undated, unsigned typed narration which closely matched the edited film, were transferred from the British War Office film vaults to London's Imperial War Museum. IWM gave the film the title "Memory of the Camps." A shot list dated May 7, 1946 suggested that the missing sixth reel comprised Russian film of the liberation of Auschwitz and Majdanek; but this reel had been left in Moscow in the hands of the Russian cameramen who shot it.

    In May 1985, PBS FRONTLINE added the script and asked the late British actor, Trevor Howard, to record it. The aim was to present the film unedited, as close as possible to what the producers intended in 1945. PBS FRONTLINE broadcast this incomplete version under the title "Memory of the Camps" on television. For more information, reefer to: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/.
    Copied From
    35mm; b/w
    Film Source
    David Haspel & Associates
    File Number
    Legacy Database File: 2023
    Record last modified:
    2024-02-21 07:55:53
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn1001481

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