Color Pictures of the Eerily Quiet of Dachau in 1950

In 1950 Hugo Jaeger, Adolf Hitler's personal photographer, traveled back to Dachau — the first of the Nazi concentration camps opened in Germany. Whatever the reasons, the photographs he made of the decaying, sunlit place feel at-once banal and vaguely obscene. Taken by anyone else, the pictures would be forgettable snapshots; when we know Hugo Jaeger was behind the camera, however, the sunlight itself seems cold, and Dachau teems with restless, invisible, unappeased ghosts.

(Photos: Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)