2010.68.143
World War II - Concentration Camp Prisoners
Artist
Acme RadioPhoto Photographer (New York Bureau)
Title
World War II - Concentration Camp Prisoners
Creation Date
11/29/1944
Century
mid-20th century
Dimensions
7 1/8 in. x 9 in. (18.1 cm x 22.86 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Creation Place
Europe, Germany
Medium and Support
gelatin silver print
Credit Line
Gift of Isaac Lagnado, Class of 1971
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2010.68.143
This photograph documents the Holocaust, the annihilation of an estimated six million European Jews in death camps and mass killings organized and carried out by German National-Socialist perpetrators, the German army, and their collaborators from 1941 to 1945. Millions of prisoners of war, members of the political opposition, religious groups, gays, disabled people, and Sinti and Roma were victims as well. Since the end of World War II, many commentators have asked whether more decisive action on the part of the allies could have stopped the atrocities earlier, and wondered whether the American news media downplayed the magnitude of the violence. Scholars suggest that the United States was distracted by wartime conflicts on multiple fronts; American journalists predominantly adhered to U.S. policy lines; xenophobia and anti-Semitism were widespread; and many people didn’t believe (or didn’t want to believe) that such a horrific act was possible. In 2001, Max Frankel, the former executive editor of the New York Times, called the newspaper’s inadequate coverage of the Holocaust “the century’s bitterest journalistic failure.”
