George C. Gross photographs

George C. Gross was a member of the 743rd tank battalion, U.S. Army, which participated in the liberation of a death train near Farsleben, Germany (near Magdeburg). After the war, Gross received a PhD in English literature and served on the faculty of San Diego State University. In the last years of his life, Dr. Gross worked with high school teacher Matthew Rozell, who researched the Magdeburg death train as part of a teacher's fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Consists of photographic negatives of images of the "death train" from which concentration camp prisoners from Bergen-Belsen were liberated near Farsleben (near Magdeburg, Germany) in April 1945. The prisoners had been placed on the train and departed Bergen-Belsen prior to the camp's liberation though the train had no intended destination. The images were taken and acquired immediately by George Gross, who was part of the 743rd Tank Battalion which secured the train while others in the unit sought provisions for the newly liberated prisoners. No restrictions on access