Opening titles and credits (see transcription below). Pan of prisoners behind barbed wire. CUs prisoners, their tatooed numbers, of the electrically charged barbed wire, ruins, various signs, guard towers, aerial views, etc. The Russian officers examine officials of camp. Men dig up graves for evidence. CU, women weeping as bodies are uncovered. CUs, decomposed bodies and pile of skulls. Gas chambers. CU can of chemicals used for gas. INTs, camp, etc. Officials of the camp are examined and, with the help of female Russian interpreter, various prisoners tell their stories. Rolling credits at beginning:"Filmdokumente von den ungeheuerlichen Verbrechen der Deutschen im Todeslager Maidenek in der Stadt Lublin. Dieser Film schildert das grenzenlose Leid und die unmenschliche Qual, denen Unschuldige aus ganz Europa unter dem Joch Hitler-Deutschlands ausgesetzt waren. Mit den raffiniertesten Methoden der Technik fuehrten die faschistischen Henker ihr Vernichtungswerke durch. Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Gusen, Ravensbrueck, Maidanek sind Schandmale in der deutschen Geschichte. Angehoerige aus allen Schichten und Staenden der verschiedenen Nationen haben hier durch die blutigen Methoden der Gestapo ein grausame Ende gefunden. Hier, vor den Toren von Lublin, wurden Schandtaten veruebt, die jedes Herz erstarren lasssen, und dabei ist Maidanek nur ein Beispiel von vielen! Das Blut der Opfer schreit zum Himmel"
Reel 1 of NARA #238.5."Filmdokument" on the German concentration camps, made under Russian auspices with narration in German. See also Story 28, Film ID 5 for duplicate (although shorter) footage. The original ADC shot card at NARA incorrectly titles this film"Prosecution Exhibit #228-229, Concentration Camps, Maidanek, 194" The Soviet film on atrocities - Film Documents of the Atrocities committed by German Fascists in the USSR (Kinodokumenty O Zverstvakh Nemetsko-Fashiskikh Zakhvatchikov) - with scenes of Majdanek was presented as evidence on February 19, 1946 (Day 62 of the trial) under Document USSR-81.
Majdanek liberated
USHMM replaced the online streaming video with a new, higher resolution digital file produced for the VHH project. The 16mm film source from NARA was scanned by the Austrian Filmmuseum in 2021.
Roman Karmen was born in 1906 in Odessa. He enrolled in the Gerasimov Institute for of Cinematography in Moscow in 1929. Throughout the 1930s, Karmen worked at the Central Studio of Documentary Film and as a correspondent for Soviet newspapers. He covered the Civil War in Spain in 1936-39. During World War II, Karmen was present on the front lines, documenting the Leningrad blockade, the surrender of German field marshal Friedrich Paulus in Volgograd, and the liberation of the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin. Karmen made the film"The Judgment of the People" about the Nuremberg trials. Karmen later filmed in Vietnam, India, and South America. The Soviet Union awarded Karmen the Lenin Prize, the highest Soviet honor, for his 1953 film"Story of the Capsian Oil Workers" Karmen died in 1978 in Moscow.