Exhumation of victims of the NKVD in Brygidki prison in Lviv in the summer of 1941. Laying out the bodies of officers and soldiers. Crowd gathered around bodies. (VQ, very soft, dark) Women poking at bodies which are being laid out in the courtyard, sweeping them clean? Woman running after and beating a man in the crowd. Soldiers pull her back and comfort her. Woman keening. A Ukrainian militiaman, recognizable by his armband, beating a Jewish man in Brygidki prison in Lviv. This was during the"prison actio" of the Lviv pogrom of 1941. Many bodies laid out in foundation of building/basement. 05:09:06 Scene change; different location. Pan around to bodies, some clothed, some with clothes partially torn off. Visible at edge of frame is a German/Nazi cameraman. LS, bodies strewn everywhere. MLS corpse with face shot off. Hat on the ground; suspenders showing. Bullet holes in the wall. Streaks of blood? LS, town, building facades with bullet holes and chips. Buildings burnt out. A field of wheat blowing in the wind, tanks upended. Everything twisted and ruptured (good quality). Awful/graphic footage of the corpses of young men. Grass ripples. Open fort on the coast? Snow flutters around. Cannons (good depth, a bit yellowy). Old, exhumed bodies laid out in sand in neat rows. Snow in rivulets. Covered in sand. Shown from four angles. Slow graceful CU pan beginning at the bare foot of a soldier (corpse). Light comes into room. Two Russian soldiers carry stretcher with a body.
According to historian John-Paul Himka (May 2010), the first part of the scene is 1941 in Lviv (Lwow), where victims of the NKVD killings were found at the prison. Jews were blamed and forced to"hel" but were also attacked by the locals. The building here should be identifiable, and the burn marks at the windows are likely to match photos. // Victims of the Russian massacre is the open field with corpses of soldiers with bullet holes - verify that they are Polish. Scholar Bernd Boll does not think it relates to Lvov; does appear to be a Baltic country (Lithuania?), where the beatings are occuring. Re. the bodies of soldiers in field, there is a known event where Germans took back a place in the Crimea which had been in Soviet hands and where a German-built hospital was attacked. This could be further documented. (June 2004)
Conditions of Use and/or Copyright updated. Correspondence from Bundesarchiv in May 2023, initially sent to Leslie Swift states: Public Domain. However, since copyright law may differ between the U.S. and Germany, Use statement U3 is being applied.
Jews beaten, bodies, crowd (Lwow); soldiers' corpses after Russian massacre