Première in Hiroshima: Herbert Sussan and the atomic bomb

Hollywood is everywhere. It even took part in the throwing of the first nuclear bomb. Among the first Americans to enter devastated Hiroshima was the renowned cameraman Herbert Sussan. Commissioned by the American government he was to document the consequences of the nuclear strike to human beings and the environment. Her portrayed what was shown to him. With painstaking precision, he gathered pictures that together make up a gallery of horror. He did not only document the catastrophic effects of a new weapon, but also those of a perversity that dissects the bomb’s victims like guinea-pigs. This encounter was haunting 3enough to make this material stamped “top secret” vanish for decades in the safes of the Pentagon. Only now, shortly before the 40th anniversary of the nuclear strike against Hiroshima, the material was rendered accessible to a broader public. On this occasion Nina Gaditz paid a visit to Herbet Susssan who himself is suffering from radiance-caused cancer now and talked to him about his work. As a result the cameraman’s biography and his pictures melted into a dismal portray of a turning-point not only in military history, but also in the history of mankind as whole.