Kenan Abdureimovich Kutub-zade (russian: Кенан Абдуреимович Кутуб-заде; 13 August 1906 22 February 1981) was a Crimean Tatar camera operator and war correspondent in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. He was the main camera operator for the film "Auschwitz Death Camp" and one of the first Soviet photojournalists to enter the camp after Nazi troops were forced out. His film of

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

atrocities was presented at the

Nuremberg trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...

. Shortly after his birth in Constantinople his family moved to

Bakhchisaray Bakhchysarai ( crh, Bağçasaray, italic=yes; russian: Бахчисара́й; ua, Бахчисара́й; tr, Bahçesaray) is a town in Crimea, a territory recognized by a majority of countries as part of Ukraine and annexed by Russia as the Re ...

, where he grew up. In 1920 he entered the printing school of the Bakhchisaray Art and Industrial College, which in graduated from in 1925 as a printing technician. He was then sent to work for the Yalta District Komsomol Committee, and in 1927 he became an assistant camera operator at the Yalta film studio, where he worked until transferring to a studio in Moscow in 1932. In 1938 he became a cameraman for the Moscow newsreel studio, and the next year he was accepted into the

Communist party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...

. After the

German invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...

, he was deployed to the front in 1942 as a cameraman in the political department on the

1st Ukrainian Front The 1st Ukrainian Front (Russian: Пéрвый Украи́нский фронт), previously the Voronezh Front (Russian: Воронежский Фронт) was a major formation of the Soviet Army during World War II, being equivalent to a ...

, seeing combat in a variety of battles, including the Bukrinsky, Kiev, Zhytomyr-Berdichev, Korsun-Shevchenkovsky, Poland, and Berlin operations. During the fighting in the Carpathians he was wounded in combat but returned to the front before recovering. In February 1945 he and his colleagues, including Aleksandr Vorontsov, Mikhail Oshurkov, and Nikolai Bykov entered Auschwitz and filmed what they saw. After the war he continued to film throughout the Soviet Union, being able to travel throughout the country since he was able to avoid being designated as a "

special settler Forced settlements in the Soviet Union were the result of Population transfer in the Soviet Union, population transfers and were performed in a series of operations organized according to social class or nationality of the deported. Resettling ...

". He lived in Riga and then Central Asia before eventually settling in Rostov, where he trained many other camera operators. His son Ismet from his first marriage, born in 1933, followed in his footsteps and also became a cameraman, while his second son Timur became a geologist.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kutub-zade, Kenan 1906 births 1981 deaths Soviet photographers Soviet military personnel of World War II Photojournalists Holocaust photographers People from Bakhchysarai Raion Crimean Tatar people Recipients of the Order of the Red Star Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the Russian Empire