A Second "Naked Man in Buchenwald Barracks" Photo

By Carolyn Yeager

Here we see a very bizarre scene of clothed men being photographed lying in bunks, while a naked man sits on a bench in front of them. They are not looking at him and he seems unaware of them. And why not? This is clearly a composite photograph made up of two unrelated scenes.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) titles this photo #78713 “Survivors lie on wooden bunks that are four tiers high in a barracks in the Buchenwald concentration camp.”

No mention of the naked man. This is truly fitting of the expression “the elephant in the living room” wherein everyone pretends not to notice something they can’t or don’t want to try to explain.

The description by the USHMM  goes on to say:

The original caption reads, “This photo shows the conditions and the amount of sleeping space for the prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp. They range from young kids to old men, all doing the same amount of work each day.”

According to the Signal Corps caption, the photo was taken on April 23, 1945.

Yet the date above this description for the photo is: Wednesday, April 11, 1945 – Monday, April 23, 1945; the photographer Donald R. Ornitz; courtesy of Mary Dickinson.

April 11 was “Liberation Day” and they always want to give the impression that all the pictures were taken on that day … that everything seen is unrehearsed and just as the liberating army found it. Yet this photo was “set up” 12 days after liberation. Another point:  Where are the “old men,” and where are the “young kids” in this photo? They all look to be in their late teens and 20′s up to their 30′s at the most.  No old men, no young kids. What were these ex-’prisoners’ doing during those 12 days; where were they living? How were they being treated? Well, they were being asked to participate in the creation of the post-war propaganda ordered by Eisenhower, and that’s what they did. Were they paid? What were they promised? Did they just hang around in the barracks as usual?

The naked man and his strange shadow

The men in the bunks are not sick or emaciated – they appear healthy and alert – so the military intelligence division responsible for creating photographic propaganda decided to add a sick man to the photo in order to support the message they were charged to send to the world of sub-human conditions at Buchenwald. It’s not hard to see how they did it — the two men on the bench were super-imposed on the other picture. The top edge of the bench is lined up with the bottom slat of the bunk, giving the impression that the bench is some feet away from the bunk.

Continue reading this article at Elie Wiesel Cons The World