| A truck load of bodies of prisoners of the Nazis, in the Buchenwald concentration camp at Weimar, Germany. The bodies were about to be disposed of by burning when the camp was captured by troops of the United States 3rd Army. A wagon loaded with corpses intended for burial stands outside the crematorium in Buchenwald. On the orders of General George S. Patton, who had inspected Buchenwald the previous day, 1,000 citizens of Weimar are taken on a tour of Buchenwald Konzentrationslager (“Concentration Camp”). Weimar civilians viewed this cart as part of the mandatory tour. Armed with a camera, Signal Corps photographer Private 1st Class Walter Chichersky (December 6, 1924 – April 14, 2008), 166th Signal Photographic Company, documented their trip on foot from Weimar to the ovens in the Buchenwald Crematorium. The bodies remained unburied for weeks. Walter Chichersky in Centralia, Pennsylvania, the son of Ukrainian immigrants; 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. He was inducted into the United States Army in 1941. Chichersky served as a photographer in the 166th Signal Photographic Company from April 1943, in France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany. Chichersky was the 1st war photographer to take pictures in the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp; his pictures were used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. After 1945, he worked for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. He then moved to Miami, Florida and worked as a dispatcher for the company Jet Avion, 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 | wwii0552.jpg |
| Image Size | 631.08 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2920 x 2232 |
| 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 | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-111-SC-203464 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database