Clarifying Seemingly Discrepancies in the Historical Record of the Holocaust

Clarification of well-known photos (and newly discovered film footage) of trains from Bergen-Belsen en route to Terezin:

From the Yad Vashem website:

Between 6-10 April 1945, days before the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, three trains were sent from the camp with some 7,000 Jews on board, bound for the Terezin ghetto. The first train was liberated by the Allies [on 13 April 1945]. The second train reached Terezin on 21 April, and the third, later known as “The Lost Train”, never reached its destination. After a journey of approximately two weeks, the train was stopped on a destroyed bridge on the Elster River, and on 23 April, it was liberated by the Red Army on the outskirts of the German village of Tröbitz.

The survivors in this well-known photo were on the first train –liberated April 13, 1945. The survivors portrayed in the 2022 feature film LOST TRANSPORT were on the third train — liberated April 23, 1945.

Why in both cases were the survivors wearing this own clothes in the liberation photos and film footage?

As explained in this Yad Vashem article — Bergen-Belsen had a:

“Dutch Camp” (“Star Camp”) … inmates who had foreign citizenship or permits, and were slated to be handed over to the Allies in exchange for German POWs.

As explained in this article from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum:

Prisoners in the “star camp” were not required to wear camp uniforms, but instead had the Star of David sewn onto their clothing (hence the camp’s name).

Clarification of well-known film clip of Jewish children being liberated from Auschwitz:

The cover of this 2017 nonfiction book is a smaller section of what often appears as a larger group of very young children being liberated from Auschwitz. The film clip is frequently used in documentaries and seems very much at odds with the minute chances of survival of young children at Auschwitz.

The book SURVIVORS CLUB: THE TRUE STORY OF A VERY YOUNG PRSIONER OF AUSCHWTIZ explains that four-year-old Michael Bornstein had survived with his paternal grandmother, both having gone to the infirmary with a sick Michael just before liberation by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945. Before then he had been hidden by his grandmother in a women’s barracks:

Three or four more days passed [after liberation], and then one morning the Soviet soldiers called some of the survivors into one area and told us we needed to put on our old striped prisoner uniforms.

The Soviets explained that they just wanted to film us exiting the camp, to record the moment in history. They had not rolled cameras the day they arrived to liberate us.

It was the dead of winter and very cold outside, so we were allowed to wear many layers under our uniforms. [Contributing to the false conclusion that the children looked well-fed.]

They lined up a group of small children — a few dozen who had survived the largest and most notorious death camp in history. ‘Pull up your shirtsleeves and show us your numbers,’ a Soviet soldier directed.

I didn’t realize then, but that footage would eventually remind millions of people around the world of the atrocities of the Holocaust. One day I, too, would watch those images on a screen and be stunned at seeing myself, dressed in prisoner stripes amid a tiny club of Auschwitz’s best hiders.