German soldiers react to footage of concentration camps, 1945

Rare Historical Photos (and the stories behind them)
 

"The image shows the faces of German POWs, captured by Americans, watching a film about a concentration camp. This forced confrontation brought Germans face-to-face with the worst works of the Third Reich. It must be really hard to go through what they did and look back knowing that everything that happened to them, all of their friends who were killed or maimed was in the name of something horrific, something totally repugnant to their own values." . . .

Another view of this scene that was taken from the back of the theater.

There was little such remorse coming from these Nazi SS troops: Muslim members of the Waffen-SS 13th division at prayer during their training in Germany, 1943

"The photo is taken during the division training at Neuhammer. The romantic notions that Himmler had about the Bosnian Muslims were probably significant in the division’s genesis. He was personally fascinated by the Islamic faith and believed that Islam created fearless soldiers. He envisioned the creation of a Bosnian SS division constituted solely of Bosnian Muslims in a manner similar to the Bosnian divisions of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire." . . .