It was produced by the United States from footage captured by military photographers serving in the Allied armies as they advanced into Germany.
[3] In 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower requested that film director George Stevens organize a team of photographers and cameramen to capture the Normandy landings and the North African campaign.
[4] The use of the footage as evidence in a war crime trial was not initially contemplated; however, on 25 April 1945, Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) issued a memo directing Signal Corps cameramen to take complete still and motion pictures of the camps.
The film contains footage from the liberation of twelve camps in Austria, Belgium, and Germany: Leipzig, Penig, Ohrdruf, Hadamar, Breendonk, Hannover, Arnstadt, Nordhausen, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Belsen.
[8] The contents of the films as described by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and documented in catalog entry 43452 (public domain material): Army Lt. Col. George C. Stevens, Navy Lt. E. Ray Kellogg and U.S. Chief of Counsel Robert H. Jackson read exhibited affidavits which attest to authenticity of scenes in film.
Map of Europe shows locations of concentration camps in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, Denmark, France, Germany, Isle of Jersey, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland and Yugoslavia.
At Leipzig concentration camp [de], there are piles of dead bodies, and many living Russian, Czechoslovakian, Polish and French prisoners.
Among them are Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force commander; Omar Bradley; and George S. Patton.
At Arnstadt Concentration Camp, German villagers are forced to exhume Polish and Russian bodies from mass graves.