It’s probably obvious to anyone who’s spent more than five minutes on our site that we have been delving into some pretty dark historical moments.
There’s a particular kind of chill that comes from real history that movies and urban legends can never replicate. These are actual documented moments that happened to real people.
So today we’re looking at a handful of dark, unsettling historical photos. A quick warning: some of these stories are intense. If you’re sensitive, proceed with caution.
The aftermath of the Tulsa massacre, 1921. Stunned Soviet officers examine a large pile of human ashes in front at Majdanek concentration camp, near Lublin, Poland. The camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1944 The aftermath of Via d’Amelio bombing by the Sicilian Mafia. Paolo Borsellino, one of the most prominent magistrates in anti-mafia investigations, along with five members of his escort, perished in the attack. July 19, 1992.People walk through the aftermath of the crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests, 1989.Aftermath of the Vietnam War – Mangrove forest destroyed by Agent Orange – 1976Medics of the US 6th Armored Division liberate a concentration camp for Women near Penig, Germany – April 1945 Aftermath of The Great Fire of Toronto in 1904 Pearl Harbor – December 7th, 1941.In the aftermath of the D-Day invasion, two boys watch from a hilltop as American soldiers drive through the town of St. Lo. France, 1944.Damage to a Jewish-owned shop in Magdeburg, Germany, as a result of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), which took place the night of November 9-10, 1938 Results of the 1977 Dutch train hostage crisis (15,000 bullets fired)Anti-Fascist Congress of the United Front in Berlin, held on July 10, 1932. It was attended by 1,465 delegates from all over Germany.Eduard Pernkopf addressing the faculty at the University of Vienna Medical School. Vienna, Germany. April 6, 1938.Jewish-American soldiers conduct services in Schloss Rheydt, former residence of Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister, in Germany on March 18, 1945Gay prisoners at the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany, wearing pink triangles on their uniforms on December 19, 1938. Antifascist rally in New York, Madison Square Garden, 1937This photo is part of a sequence taken by the automatic bomb strike camera of a B-17 showing the final 18 seconds of B-17G 42 ‘Wee Willie’ over Stendal, Saxony- Anhalt, Germany, after it was hit by an 88mm flak burst.A penguin stands to attention next to a British soldier after the Falklands War.Chilling in New York on September 11, 2001. B-24 Liberator “Extra Joker” goes down in flames during a raid over Austria in 1944. Sgt. Leo Stautsenberger, the man who captured that haunting image, was supposed to be on that very plane, but his CO assigned him to another B-24 on the day of the mission. All 10 crewmen were KIA.Apprehensive GIs load onto a British landing craft for the invasion of Normandy. D-Day, 1944.Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex, aerial photograph from a 1944 Allied recon plane An emaciated boy during the Dutch famine (hongerwinter), the Netherlands, World War II, circa 1944.Christmas packages destined for soldiers who have been KIA or reported missing in action await “return to sender” stamps. New York City, 1944.Inmates of Mauthausen Concentration Camp located in Upper Austria, 1944Slit trenches at a German strongpoint lined with desecrated Jewish tombstones, Thessaloniki, 1944.French female collaborator punished by having her head shaved to publicly mark her, 1944.Trailer camp children. Richmond, California, 1944. Photograph by Ansel Adams.Russian conscript with his family before being deployed to the front, Karachev, Bryansk, Russia, 1943.Exhausted German soldiers returning from close quarter combat with Soviet shock troops in Ukraine, 1943Concentration Camp inmates at BMW in Munich – Allach, ca. 1943.Jews making matzo in the Lodz Ghetto, 1943 Japanese-American farmers working at Tule Lake Relocation Center, Newell, California, United States, 1942-1943 A diver as he ascends from the oily interior of the sunken battleship USS Arizona (BB 39) . Photograph released May 23, 1943.
