Auschwitz Album
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Auschwitz Album is a photographic record of the Holocaust during the
Second World War 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 opposi ...
. It and the ''Sonderkommando'' photographs are the only known pictorial evidence of the extermination process inside
Auschwitz II-Birkenau Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
, the German
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
in
occupied Poland ' ( Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 Octobe ...
.The Auschwitz Album at Yad Vashem
with supplementary data and bibliography. The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
The images were taken by photographers from the camp's Erkennungsdienst ("identification service"). The identity of the photographers is uncertain, but it is thought to have been Bernhard Walter or Ernst Hoffmann, two SS men who were director and deputy director of the Erkennungsdienst. Among other things, the Erkennungsdienst was responsible for fingerprinting and taking photo IDs of prisoners who had not been selected for extermination. The album has 56 pages and 193 photographs. Originally, it had more photographs, but before being donated to
Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
, the
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; ...
museum in Israel, some of them were given to survivors who recognized relatives and friends.


Description

The images follow the processing of newly arrived
Hungarian Jew The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived ...
s from
Carpathian Ruthenia Carpathian Ruthenia ( rue, Карпатьска Русь, Karpat'ska Rus'; uk, Закарпаття, Zakarpattia; sk, Podkarpatská Rus; hu, Kárpátalja; ro, Transcarpatia; pl, Zakarpacie); cz, Podkarpatská Rus; german: Karpatenukrai ...
in the early summer of 1944. They document the disembarkation of the Jewish prisoners from the train boxcars, followed by the selection process, performed by doctors of the SS and wardens of the camp, which separated those who were considered fit for work from those who were to be sent to the gas chambers. The photographer followed groups of those selected for work, and those selected for death to a birch grove just outside the crematoria, where they were made to wait before being killed. The photographer also documented the workings of the ''Canada'' storage facilities, where the looted belongings of the prisoners were sorted before transport to Germany.


History

The album's survival is remarkable, given the strenuous efforts made by the Nazis to keep the "
Final Solution The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
" a secret. Also remarkable is the story of its discovery. Lili Jacob (later Lili Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier) was selected for work at Auschwitz-Birkenau, while the other members of her family were sent to the gas chambers. The Auschwitz camp was evacuated by the Nazis as the Soviet army approached. Jacob passed through various camps, finally arriving at the Dora concentration camp, where she was eventually liberated. Recovering from illness in a vacated barracks of the SS, Jacob found the album in a cupboard beside her bed. Inside, she found pictures of herself, her relatives, and others from her community. The coincidence was astounding, given that the Nordhausen-Dora camp was over away, and that over 1,100,000 people were killed at Auschwitz. The album's existence had been known publicly since at least the 1960s, when it was used as evidence at the
Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German as ''der Auschwitz-Prozess'', or ''der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess,'' (the "second Auschwitz trial") was a series of trials running from 20 December 1963 to 19 August 1965, charging 22 defendants unde ...
. Nazi-hunter
Serge Klarsfeld Serge Klarsfeld (born 17 September 1935) is a Romanian-born French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the record and to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Since the 1960s, he has made notab ...
visited Lili in 1980 and convinced her to donate the album to
Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
. The album's contents were first published that year in the book ''The Auschwitz Album'', edited by Klarsfeld.


See also

*
Höcker Album The Höcker Album (or Hoecker Album) is a collection of photographs believed to have been collected by Karl-Friedrich Höcker, an officer in the Schutzstaffel, SS during the Nazi Germany, Nazi regime in Germany. It contains over one hundred images ...
a collection of photographs with SS who ran the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp * Sonderkommando photographs taken at Auschwitz in 1944; possibly by Alberto Errera * Wilhelm Brasse, prisoner and photographer at Auschwitz


Notes


Bibliography

*
Oliver Lustig's Text Presentation of Historic Holocaust Photographs from the Auschwitz Album
from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not"


External links


Digitized album
by
Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
{{Photography of the Holocaust
Album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records co ...
Photographic collections and books Holocaust photographs 1944 works 1944 in art Yad Vashem Black-and-white photographs