Gestapo Informer Recognized by a Woman She Had Denounced

[1] While working for the French Army's film and photography unit, Cartier-Bresson was caught by the Germans and became a prisoner of war in June 1940.

[2] This picture was taken at the Dessau deportation camp, in East Germany, recently liberated by the Soviet and American armies, and which was being used as a shelter for displaced people, forced workers, political and war prisoners, and refugees.

She rushes from the crowd to do that and stands angry and defiant to her left, while the alleged informer lowers her head in shame.

A crowd at the background witnesses the dramatic event, including a man in "stryped pyjamas" who looks defiantly at the left.

[3] The identity of the two women is unknown but the man seated at the desk was Wilhelm Heinrich van der Velden, a young Dutchman nominated by the Americans to that position, who had been recently liberated from the Westerbork Camp, in the Netherlands.