| Original caption: “These charred bodies were found by troops of the United States Army Eightieth Infantry Division in furnace of horror chamber at the Buchenwald concentration camp near Jena, Germany.” Bones of anti-Nazi German women still are smolder the crematoriums in the Buchenwald Nazi German konzentrationslager (KZ; “concentration camp”). The ovens manufactured by the Johann Andreas Topf & Söhne Company of Erfurt became a chief symbol as well as prime evidence of the industrialized mass murder committed in the concentration camps. In addition to Auschwitz and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Topf & Söhne built crematorium ovens for Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen-Gusen, Mogilev ghetto, and the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Out of the 5 ovens at Dachau concentration camp, 4 were made by H. Kori and 1 by Topf & Söhne. In all, Topf built 25 crematorium ovens which had a total of 76 incineration chambers (called ‘muffles’) for concentration camps. H. Kori built 42 single-chamber ovens at various camps. Armed with a camera, Signal Corps photographer Walter Chichersky (December 6, 1924 – April 14, 2008) documented their trip on foot on April 16, 1945, from Weimar to the ovens in the Buchenwald Crematorium. News correspondents from all over the world visited the camp and made verbal and visual records of the conditions there. Throughout the rest of April and well into May, they were joined by a seemingly endless stream of delegations of the International Red Cross, the American Congress, the British parliament, American publishers and individual public figures. Chichersky was born in Centralia, Pennsylvania, the son of Ukrainian immigrants and grew up in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As a teenager, he founded a Ukrainian dance group with his sisters and performed at the 1938 World’s Fair in New York. Chichersky took Basic training in the United States Army in 1941; in April 1943, promoted to Private 1st Class, serving in the 166th Signal Photographic Company in France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany. He was the 1st war photographer to take pictures in the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. Chichersky’s pictures were used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. After 1945, Chichersky worked for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Later, he moved to Florida; worked as a dispatcher for the company “Jet Avion” near Miami, where he lived with his wife and son. Chichersky moved back to Bethlehem after the death of his wife in the late 1990s and died in a nursing home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0543.jpg |
| Image Size | 745.23 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2932 x 2333 |
| Photographer | Walter Chichersky |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 16, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Buchenwald |
| City | Weimar |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | NRE-338-FTL(EF)-3134(5) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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