Margaret Bourke White is famous for her photographic essays of WWII. White took this photo (above) entitled, The Living Dead, of
German men looking at a group concentration camp prisoners (although we cannot see the prisoners) after the camp was liberated. When she was asked by a LIFE magazine writer about the picture, she replied, "Dead men will have indeed died in vain, if living men refuse to look at them." What did she mean?
Answer: If the living do not examine pas mistakes, in particular with war and hatred, then the ones who died because of these things will have died for no reason.
Explanation:
Margaret Bourke-White understood that the best way to deal with the past is to examine it, learn from it to avoid repeating the atrocities humankind is capable of. This photographs became one of the most well-known of the Holocaust, as it seizes both Nazi inhumanity as well as the force of those who survived forced labor and savageness inside one of the most damaging concentration camps.
