Iconic camp images from liberation were atypical of the system’s normal operation

Evidence

It is of some importance to realize that all pictures of concentration camps are misleading insofar as they show the camps in their last stages, at the moment the Allied troops marched in. There were no death camps in Germany proper, and at that point all extermination equipment had already been dismantled. On the other hand, what provoked the outrage of the Allies most and what gives the films their special horror—namely, the sight of the human skeletons—was not at ail typical for the German concentration camps; extermination was handled systematically by gas, not by starvation. The condition of the camps was a result of the war events during the final months: Himmler had ordered the evacuation of all extermination camps in the East, the German camps were consequently vastly overcrowded, and he was no longer in a position to assure the food supply in Germany. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2825

Categorization

• XREF: Matters for how the camps are remembered and represented — connects to representation and the construction of the Other, and to how a regime’s closing moments distort its essential practice.