Page 129 – LIFE

High Kicks and Hard Knocks: Inside Life With the Rockettes

November 22, 2021November 15, 2013 by

Holiday seasons are about the return of traditions, both within families and across American culture.

One long-running American tradition is the annual Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which was sidelined like so many other stage shows in 2020 but kicks off once again in New York City in 2021. Whether Radio City Hall is across the street (as it was from the old LIFE magazine offices) or a couple thousand miles away, the return of those high kicks is as sure a sign of that the holiday season is upon as as trees in the living room and window displays in department stores.

LIFE took readers deep inside the world of the Rockettes in its Dec. 11, 1964 cover story. Titled “The World’s Most Famous Kick,” the story was rich in behind-the-scenes detail and showed how the dancers prepped for four shows a day, seven days a week, on one of the most famous stages in the world.

The piece, with photos by Art Rickerby. focused on five young dancers who, out of the many hopefuls who had auditioned that year, were talented and driven enough to earn a spot on stage:

Little girls who grow up to be Rockettes are born and raised in places like Milford, Mass., and Niles, Ohio, and Erie, Pa., and they get thrust into dancing classes by their mamas when they are scarcely more than toddlers. As they grow older they hear about the great dance spectacle at the Radio City Music Hall and start to wonder if. . . .

The more enterprising ones write letters asking how one goes about becoming a Rockette. They get polite form replies listing the requirements: they must be high school graduates, between 5-feet 5-inches and 5-feet 8-inches tall, have good figures and be excellent performers in tap, ballet, modern jazz dance and high kicks.

LIFE’s story also shined a spotlight on Russell Markert, a true impresario who directed the Rockettes from the opening of Radio City 1932 to his retirement in 1971:

“Lean back [Markert said in rehearsal] as if you were saying, ‘Hallelujah!’ Got it? You, over there, put some blood in those arms. They look like weak fish. And you, the blonde, don’t be afraid to stick out your butt and never mind twisting the backside it throws you off. Don’t you hear the beat? Here I’ll hum it for you.”

Markert is a brisk and stern taskmaster, first demonstrating a new routine to his girls, then letting them try it, then throwing up his arms in dismay and flinging himself into the group to dance with them. [He] is a kindly man who clucks over his girls, and calls them “my dancing daughters” … [If] anybody falters during a performance, even so slightly that the audience would never notice, he sinks into private pits of black despair.”

Of the first-year Rockettes who were featured in the issue—young women who hailed from small towns in Maine, Ohio, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania—LIFE provided a bracing glimpse into the reality of their lives:

Each more frightened than the other, they decided to join forces in a city that turned to be even more perilous than they had imagined. They paid $300 a month for a shabby two-room apartment in a run-down hotel and nobody told them they were being overcharged. They were snapped at by waitresses and cabbies and pushed and shoved about in the subway. But four times a day they changed into spangles and feathers and make-up and danced before 6,200 patrons who had paid to see them.

More than a half-century after LIFE’s story ran, show goes on. The dancers take the stage at Radio City Music Hall, and the patrons get what they came to see. The performance is a reassuring sign that, come holiday season, tradition is alive and kicking.

The Rockettes, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

First-year Rockettes in New York, 1964. From left: Susan Borin, 21; Jane Simpson, 18; Karen Galvin, 18; and Mary Ann de Mare, 19.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

First-year Rockettes in New York, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The original caption from LIFE in 1964 noted, “Taking supper at home, they wolf down franks, beans and low-calorie soda pop. Their work schedule leaves little time for dating.”

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

First-year Rockettes in New York, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE’s original caption from 1964 read: “After their exhausting first day at the Music Hall five roommates find energy for a yelping pillow fight to help them unwind.”

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

First-year Rockette Susan Borin in New York, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

First-year Rockettes in New York, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rockettes rehearsed with director Russell Markert, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rockettes director Russell Markert demonstrated the troupe’s trademark “eye-high” kick at rehearsal, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rockettes rehearsal, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE’s caption in 1964 read: Caption from LIFE. “Mary Ann de Mare, 19, winces in pain as she stretches during strenuous warm-up exercises with Sue Borin, 21, prior to rehearsal.”

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rockettes rehearsal, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

First-year Rockette Sue Borin backstage, 1964.

Art RickerbyLife Pictures/Shutterstock

The Rockettes 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Rockettes, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rockettes in rehearsal, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE’s original caption read, “Just like a general inspecting his troops, Markert passes along the line straightening feet.”

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Rockettes, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Rockettes performed at Radio City Music Hall, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy in the Early ’60s: An American Icon

January 5, 2020October 26, 2013 by

It was in those brief, heady years or perhaps it was really just one year, during the campaign and election of 1960 when John F. Kennedy and his young, beautiful wife were fast becoming national and then international celebrities that the legend of Jackie was born.

Looking back, even in the light of all we know about her fraught, strained, “storybook” marriage to an obsessively philandering husband, there seems to be something special about Jackie Kennedy. Maybe it’s that the camera loved her. Maybe she was so intriguing to so many people simply because, set beside the other prominent women in Washington, DC, in the early 1960s, she was young (barely in her 30s), chic and, with her Irish and French ancestry, indefinably and refreshingly “exotic.”

Whatever the reasons behind her appeal, for millions of women around the globe and across generations, Jackied Kenneedy—the woman in the White House in the Oleg Cassini outfits (made expressly for her), throwing formal dinner parties for artists, scientists and diplomats, and traveling the world—was the face of a new era and of a new type of American woman. Jackie was, somehow, at once warm and elegant, youthful and sophisticated, fun-loving and serious and on top of it all, self-deprecatingly funny.

“The one thing I do not want to be called is ‘first lady,'” she once said. “It sounds like a saddle horse.”

Her husband, for his part, not only took his wife’s enormous popularity in stride, but humbly acknowledged that, at times, he necessarily played second fiddle. After Jackie (who spoke fluent French) enjoyed a rapturous reception during a May 1961 trip to Paris, John Kennedy famously joked at a dinner: “I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.”

Here, LIFE.com offers a selection of pictures from that time in her life when she was first known to a rapt world, simply, as Jackie.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of complications from cancer in 1994 at just 64 years old. “My mother died surrounded by her friends and her family and her books, and the people and the things that she loved,” her son, the late John Jr., said. “She did it in her own way, and on her own terms, and we all feel lucky for that.”

Buy the LIFE special edition: The Day Kennedy Died]

Jackie Kennedy in India, 1962.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy during a campaign dinner, 1960.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy watched a televised debate between the Republican presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, and her husband, John F. Kennedy, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy read to her daughter Caroline at the Kennedy family home in Hyannis Port, Mass., 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The mayor of New York City, Robert Wagner Jr., spoke to Jackie Kennedy during a campaign dinner in 1960.

Ed Clark Time/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy in 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy in 1960

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

President-elect John Kennedy with Jackie in January 1961.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy at a formal dinner, 1960.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy in 1960

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy in 1960

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy in India, 1962.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Roll Another One: LIFE Goes Bowling

August 11, 2021October 20, 2013 by

There’s a lot to be said for bowling. It’s loud. It involves a kind of controlled violence. It requires strength, coordination and genuine technique. And it’s damn fun.

Here, for no other reason than we like the sport and because the pictures are pretty cool, LIFE.com presents photographs of men, women and kids bowling. Some of the bowlers are serious. Some are what we might call hobbyists. Some are clearly awful. But what they all share is the evident desire to smash the pins. To make that improbable spare. To nail a convincing, resounding, unmistakable strike.

Ready to roll?

Pins Scatter As They Fall

Mark Kauffman-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Bowler Leans With The Ball

Ralph Morse-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Body Language

Ralph Morse-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Have A Cigar

Ralph Morse-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Kneel Down

Ralph Morse-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Grimace

Ralph Morse-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Averted Eyes

Ralph Morse-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Midair Attention

Gjon Mili-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Women’s Bowling Champion

George Skadding-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Twinkle Watts Hits Her Stride

Bernard Hoffman-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Team Sponsor

Ralph Morse-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Windup

Stan Wayman-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Frustration

Stan Wayman-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Bowling in Teaneck

Gjon Mili-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Cheering Section

Gjon Mili-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Church Bowling

Margaret Bourke-White-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Championship Stride

Francis Miller-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Queen of Bowling

Francis Miller-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Women Celebrate at a Bowling Alley Bar

Stan Wayman-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Beauty Shop In A Bowling Alley

Stan Wayman-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Children Bowling

Stan Wayman-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Archers and Bowlers at the Sunnyside Bowl

J. R. Eyerman-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Geisha Bowling in Kyoto

Larry Burrows-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Bowler Watches His Ball

Thomas D. McAvoy-Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Teenage Wasteland: Portraits of Japanese Youth in Revolt, 1964

January 17, 2020October 19, 2013 by

The teenage years can be hard anywhere. That said, in very few societies is the idea of youth as fraught as it is in Japan, with its culture of conformity.

In 1964, LIFE photographer Michael Rougier and correspondent Robert Morse spent time documenting one Japanese generation’s age of revolt, and came away with an astonishingly intimate, frequently unsettling portrait of teenagers hurtling willfully toward oblivion.

In Rougier’s photos—pictures that seem to breathe both reckless energy and acute despair—we don’t merely glimpse kids pushing the boundaries of rebellion. Instead, this generation of lost boys and girls seem to be trying to tell us something something reproachful and perplexing about the world we’ve made.

The teens and other young adults portrayed in Rougier’s pictures, Morse noted in a 1964 LIFE special issue on Japan (where some of these images first appeared), are “part of a phenomenon long familiar in countries of the Western world: a rebellious younger generation, a bitter and poignant minority breaking from [its] country’s past.”

All through that past, a sense of connection with the old traditions and authority has kept Japanese children obedient and very close to the family. This sense still controls most of Japan’s youth, who besiege offices and factories for jobs and the universities for education and gives the whole country an electric vitality and urgency. But as its members run away from the family and authority, this generation in rebellion grows.

In notes that accompanied Rougier’s film when it was sent to LIFE’s, Morse delved even deeper into the lives, as he perceived them, of runaways, “pill-takers” and other profoundly disengaged Tokyo teens:

Nowhere in the world does youth seem to dominate a nation as they do in Japan. They are overwhelming and everywhere, surging, searching, experimenting, ambitious at some times, helpless and without hope at others. Isolated on a tight little island, they have not, except on the surface, become international like their counterparts in freewheeling Europe.

Seeing the well-scrubbed faces of the black uniformed male students and middy-bloused girls swarming through Tokyo, physical-fitness minded young men galloping through the Ginza, and the bright young things clamoring after a teen-age idol, it would seem to the casual observer that here is a country with a youth as wholesome and happy as a hot fudge sundae.

This is not true at all.

A large segment of Japanese young people are, deep down, desperately unhappy and lost. And they talk freely about their frustrations. Many have lost respect for their elders, always a keystone of Japanese life, and in some cases denounce the older people for “for having gotten us into a senseless war.”

Having sliced the ties that bind them to the home, in desperation they form their own miniature societies with rules of their own. The young people in these groups are are bound to one another not out of mutual affection in many cases the “lost ones” are incapable of affection but from the need to belong, to be part of something.

Both the article in LIFE and the story told in Morse’s ruminative and, in some ways, far more devastating notes make clear that this “lost generation” was not even remotely monolithic. While they might, to varying degrees, have shared a genuinely nihilistic outlook toward their own and their country’s future, the runaways, rock and roll fanatics (the “monkey-dance, Beatles set,” Morse calls them), pill-poppers, “motorcycle kids” and innumerable other subsets of Japan’s youth-driven subculture attest to the breadth and depth of teen disaffection to be found in 1964 Tokyo.

That Michael Rougier, meanwhile, was able to so compassionately portray not only that disaffection, but also captured moments of genuine fellowship and even a fleeting sort of joy among these desperately searching teens, attests to the man’s talent and his dedication to share the story of what he saw.

—Liz Ronk edited this photo gallery for LIFE.com.

Kako, languid from sleeping pills, was in a world of her own in a jazz shop in Tokyo.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Yoko, 17 years old, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The teen in the center was the 17-year-old leader of a crew of jazz fans. He was known only by his nickname, “Naron,” a popular sleeping pill brand.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Yoko, 17 years old, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Yoko, 17 years old, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

These motorcycle kids were one of numerous subsets of teen subcultures in Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Listening to jazz, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Lost in the music, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier—Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

These fans rocked to the Tokyo Beatles.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Fans danced to the Tokyo Beatles, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rocking out with the Tokyo Beatles, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A fan (right) and a “Tokyo Beatle,” 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Fans screamed for the Tokyo Beatles, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Tokyo Beatles backstage, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

MMichael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Yoko often ended her long nights sprawled on a futon in a friend’s room.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Naron” (at left, stretching) and friends at dawn after an all-night party at the beach.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

Naron” (at left, stretching) and friends at dawn after an all-night party at the beach.

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Naron” and an unidentified girl at dawn after an all-night beach party, Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sometimes Yoko went down to the port in Yokohama to watch the ships sail off to the places she only wished she cold go.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Japanese youth, Tokyo, 1964.

JFK on the Campaign Trail, 1960: A President in the Making

January 3, 2020October 14, 2013 by

In stark, revealing contrast to the glamorous, effortless Kennedy of popular myth, John F. Kennedy on the stump was a tough, savvy campaigner. Well aware that much of the country distrusted almost everything about him—his Massachusetts-liberal politics, his Boston accent, his Roman Catholicism—he set about winning over skeptics by employing the very gifts that generated such suspicion in those who knew little about him. He charmed. He cajoled. At times (in back-room negotiations with other pols) he browbeat and he bullied.

Buy the LIFE book, The Day Kennedy Died.

And on November 8, 1960, John Kennedy was elected president of the United States, defeating Richard Nixon in one of the closest national elections of the 20th century. At 43, Kennedy was (and remains) the youngest person elected to the office, and it was largely this quality in the man and his family—an engaging, youthful dynamism—that captured the imagination of millions across the country and, ultimately, the world.

As Kennedy and his team ran a heady, propulsive campaign unlike any America had seen, LIFE’s best photographers (Paul Schutzer, Alfred Eisenstaedt, George Silk and others) were there, chronicling the grind of never-ending public appearances and the quieter moments JFK spent with advisers, with Jackie and rarest of all alone, with his own thoughts.

Here, LIFE.com presents photographs—none of which ran in LIFE magazine—chronicling an enigmatic, intensely ambitious man making history.

John F. Kennedy discussed strategy during his presidential campaign, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Scene from John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign.

Hank Walker/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy, West Virginia, 1960

Hank Walker/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

JFK fans, 1960

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy spoke in West Virginia during his 1960 presidential campaign.

Hank Walker/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A JFK and LBJ supporter in Mount Clemens, Michigan, October 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy and unidentified boy, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy spoke in Grand Prairie, Texas, September, 1960

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy campaign, 1960.

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy campaign, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy campaign, 1960

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon, telephone booth, 1960

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy, 1960

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy campaign, Texas, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy braved an autumn chill while campaigning in an open car at night in Illinois, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy, 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John and Jackie Kennedy, Massachusetts, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy during his campaign for president, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

On a drive through Illinois, Paul Schutzer turned his camera on his colleagues in the press, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy on the stump, October, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy gazes out on New York Harbor from a ferry, October 1960.

Paul Schutzer Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy, 1960

Stan Wayman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy campaign, 1960

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy, 1960 campaign

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The day after an election in which he bested Nixon, president-elect Kennedy gave a brief victory speech at the Hyannis Armory, Nov. 1960.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Behind the Picture: The Liberation of Buchenwald, April 1945

September 28, 2022October 10, 2013 by

[Note: This gallery contains graphic images.]

Some photographs are so much of their time that, as years pass, they acquire an air of genuine authority about an event, a person, a place and even, perhaps, an air of inevitability. This is what it was like, these pictures seem to say. This is what happened. This is the moment. This is what we remember.

Of the many indispensable photos made during the Second World War, Margaret Bourke-White’s portrait of survivors at Buchenwald in April 1945 “staring out at their Allied rescuers,” as LIFE magazine put it, “like so many living corpses” remains among the most haunting. The faces of the men, young and old, staring from behind the wire, “barely able to believe that they would be delivered from a Nazi camp where the only deliverance had been death,” attest with an awful eloquence to the depths of human depravity and, perhaps even more powerfully, to the measureless lineaments of human endurance.

What few people recall about Bourke-White’s survivors-at-the-wire image, however, is that it did not even appear in LIFE until 15 years after it was made, when it was published alongside other photographic touchstones in the magazine’s Dec. 26, 1960, special double-issue, “25 Years of LIFE.”

Pictures from Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen and other camps that LIFE did publish made when Bourke-White and her colleagues accompanied Gen. George Patton’s Third Army on its storied march through a collapsing Germany in the spring of 1945 were among the very first to document for a largely disbelieving public, in America and around the world, the wholly murderous nature of the camps. (At the end of this gallery, see how the original story on the liberation of the camps appeared in the May 7, 1945, issue of LIFE, when the magazine published a series of brutal photographs by Bourke-White, William Vandivert and other LIFE staffers.)

Here, so many decades after the liberation of Buchenwald, LIFE.com presents a series of Bourke-White photographs most of which never ran in LIFE magazine from that notorious camp located a mere five miles outside the ancient, picturesque town of Weimar, Germany.

Her justifiably iconic picture of men at the Buchenwald fence suggests the horrors made manifest by the Nazi push for a “final solution”: the other Bourke-White photographs here, on the other hand, do not suggest, or hint at, the Third Reich’s horrors. Instead, they force the Holocaust’s nightmares into the unblinking light.

In Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly her devastating 1946 memoir, subtitled “A Report on the Collapse of Hitler’s ‘Thousand Years'” Bourke-White recalls the ghastly landscape that confronted the Allied troops who liberated Buchenwald, and her own tortured response to what she, the Allied troops and her fellow journalists witnessed and recorded there:

There was an air of unreality about that April day in Weimar, a feeling to which I found myself stubbornly clinging. I kept telling myself that I would believe the indescribably horrible sight in the courtyard before me only when I had a chance to look at my own photographs. Using the camera was almost a relief; it interposed a slight barrier between myself and the white horror in front of me.

This whiteness had the fragile translucence of snow, and I wished that under the bright April sun which shone from a clean blue sky it would all simply melt away. I longed for it to disappear, because while it was there I was reminded that men actually had done this thing men with arms and legs and eyes and hearts not so very unlike our own. And it made me ashamed to be a member of the human race.

The several hundred other spectators who filed through the Buchenwald courtyard on that sunny April afternoon were equally unwilling to admit association with the human beings who had perpetrated these horrors. But their reluctance had a certain tinge of self-interest; for these were the citizens of Weimar, eager to plead their ignorance of the outrages.

In one of the signal moments of his long career and, indeed, of the entire war, an enraged General Patton refused to recognize that the Weimar citizens’ ignorance might be genuine or, if it was genuine, that it was somehow, in any moral sense, pardonable. He ordered the townspeople to bear witness to what their countrymen had done, and what they themselves had allowed to be done, in their name.

Margaret Bourke-White’s pictures of these terribly ordinary men and women appalled, frightened, ashamed amid the endless evidence of the terrors their compatriots had unleashed remain among the most unsettling she, or any photographer, ever made. Long before the political theorist Hannah Arendt introduced her notion of the “banality of evil” to the world in her 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Margaret Bourke-White had already captured its face, for all time, in her photographs of “good Germans” forced to confront their own complicity in a barbarous age.

—story by Ben Cosgrove