Sources for America’s History: Printed Page 603
24-5 | | LIFE Magazine Exposes the Horrors of Germany’s Concentration Camps |
LIFE MAGAZINE, Atrocities (1945) |
LIFE magazine graphically captured the war’s human toll in its May 7, 1945, issue featuring haunting photographs by George Rodger and Margaret Bourke-White. Titled “Atrocities,” the article depicted victims of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen. At these and other camps, Germany’s campaign against Jews and others they deemed inferior resulted in millions of deaths. In one image, a boy walks along the road outside Belsen amidst rows of bodies.
READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What impact do you think the editors at LIFE magazine intended the article to have on its audience? What perspective on the meaning of the war do you think they were trying to communicate?
How would you assess the significance of this type of photojournalism in shaping public opinion? What comparisons can you draw between the effect achieved with these images and others you may be familiar with, for instance, Jacob Riis depicting late-nineteenth-century tenements or Dorothea Lange showing Great Depression poverty?