{"id":6180,"date":"2021-11-02T19:05:38","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T19:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6180"},"modified":"2021-11-10T18:09:45","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T18:09:45","slug":"hirsch-2-november-2021-photography-and-the-holocaust-then-now","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6180","title":{"rendered":"Photography and the Holocaust: Then &#038; Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6312\">Return to theme table of content <\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">Return to VJIC table of content<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Thread #2 <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 16pt;\"><strong>Nazi Photographic Perspectives<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u00a9 Robert Hirsch 2021<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong><em>VASA Journal on Images and Culture<\/em> (<em>VJIC<\/em>), Theme Editor and Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/644215552?h=5067672773\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A man said to the universe:<br \/>\n\u201cSir, I exist!\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cHowever,\u201d replied the universe,<br \/>\n\u201cThe fact has not created in me<br \/>\nA sense of obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Stephen Crane<br \/>\nPoem from<em> War is Kind<\/em>, 1900<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This thread of <em>Photography and the Holocaust: Then &amp; Now<\/em> examines the perspective of a few select Nazi photographers and those in their service who made personal and official documents<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref\">[i]<\/a> of what they saw happening around the ghettos and concentration camps, and how their images can be interpreted. The next thread will feature the viewpoint of significant Jewish Holocaust photographers such as Mendel Grossman, Fay Shulman, and the Sonderkommando. Note: Additional information about the images can be found at the end of this essay.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6400\" style=\"width: 201px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6400\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6400\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.1-Hyperinflation-Germany-191x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"191\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.1-Hyperinflation-Germany-191x300.jpg 191w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.1-Hyperinflation-Germany-96x150.jpg 96w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.1-Hyperinflation-Germany.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 191px) 100vw, 191px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6400\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.1 Hyperinflation in Germany<br \/>Unknown photographer. Woman wearing a dress and hat made of German currency, circa 1923.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The cultural, economic, political, psychological situation in post-World War I Germany created an environment in which the Nazis (National Socialist German Workers\u2019 Party) could claim that their fabricated, superior, primordial Aaryan identity gave them the right and the duty to create a super fatherland (Vaterland). This black hole singularity of National Socialism produced mass lunacy, a psychic blind spot<a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref\">[ii]<\/a> that correlated with the Nazi\u2019s spurious racial hygiene theories,<a href=\"#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref\">[iii]<\/a> which gave them a \u201cscientific\u201d rationale for conquering, enslaving, and murdering everyone whom they considered outsiders. The German knack of seeing into the future that produced outstanding achievements in the arts and science was only bested by their ability to look away from the present.<\/p>\n<p>The key issue Nazi Holocaust photography raises is not aesthetic or process oriented, but a communal question: Why do people engage in intolerant and merciless behaviors? Every Nazi Holocaust photograph reflects, at its core, the result of dehumanizing racism\u2014the first step towards authoritarian repression and violence. Antisemitism is a timeless, shapeshifting, multipurpose, scapegoating hatred that transfers the responsibility of ones actions and problems collectively onto Jews. Antisemitism remains such a significant international problem that the German government is currently spending $40 million researching its causes, in order to see what might be done to diminish it.<a href=\"#_edn4\" name=\"_ednref\">[iv]<\/a> Additionally, the European Commission has reserved $28 million (24 million euros) to heighten protection around already guarded synagogues and other Jewish events or sites.<a href=\"#_edn5\" name=\"_ednref\">[v]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6401\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6401\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6401\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.2-Palestinian-flaming-swastika.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.2-Palestinian-flaming-swastika.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.2-Palestinian-flaming-swastika-300x175.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.2-Palestinian-flaming-swastika-150x88.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6401\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.2 Palestinian rioters near Evyatar outpost put up flaming swastika, 2021.<br \/>Abduallah Bahsh\/Quds News Network\/Screenshot.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This installment inspects Holocaust photography made from the point of view of the perpetrators reenforcing the premise that every photograph made by a German, whether a common soldier or civilian, is about death and the insanity of seeking perfection through delusion. Each of these photographs has an embedded subtext of complicity\u2014causing harm directly or indirectly by being involved in the unmerited wrongdoing of others. Their small, individual, self-serving actions and nonactions are what made the collective depravity of the Holocaust possible.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6402\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6402\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6402\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.3-Deportation-Dobsina-Gemer-Slovakia-Czechoslovakia-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"404\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.3-Deportation-Dobsina-Gemer-Slovakia-Czechoslovakia-.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.3-Deportation-Dobsina-Gemer-Slovakia-Czechoslovakia--300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.3-Deportation-Dobsina-Gemer-Slovakia-Czechoslovakia--150x101.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6402\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.3 Public Deportation of Jews, Dobsina, Gemer, Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, circa 1942.<br \/>Unknown photographer. Vad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel. (https:\/\/photos.yadvashem.org\/)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Heinrich Joest (aka Heinrich Jost) was a German soldier stationed in Poland who decided to spend his 43<sup>rd<\/sup> birthday taking \u201ctourist\u201d pictures in Warsaw. Joest openly defied the German Army\u2019s prohibition of photographing the Jews imprisoned inside the Warsaw ghetto\u2019s 10-foot-high walls. On Sept. 9, 1941, he made 129 photographs, including images of starving and dead children in the street, while walking in uniform, with his Rollieflex camera. Joest even came across Jews he knew, but did not photograph them. In a number of photographs, he recorded another German soldier buying items at bargain prices from desperate Jews who needed money for black market food and coal. He did not show his \u201csightseer\u201d photographs to anyone until shortly before his death when he gave them to G\u00fcnther Schwarberg of the German magazine <em>Der Stern<\/em>. In comments to Schwarberg, Joest said: \u201cIn my letters home I didn\u2019t say anything about what I&#8217;d seen. I didn&#8217;t want to upset my family. I thought, \u2018What sort of a world is this?\u2019 I didn\u2019t tell my comrades anything either. Later on, when they burned down the ghetto, we didn\u2019t pay any attention.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn6\" name=\"_ednref\">[vi]<\/a> <em>Der Stern<\/em> declined to publish any of the photographs, but in 1987, turned them over to the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6403\" style=\"width: 302px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6403\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6403\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.4-Joest_Sisters--292x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"292\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.4-Joest_Sisters--292x300.jpg 292w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.4-Joest_Sisters--146x150.jpg 146w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.4-Joest_Sisters-.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 292px) 100vw, 292px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6403\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.4 A destitute little girl comforts her little sister, who lies unconscious in her lap, 1941. Heinrich Joest. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Joest\u2019s raw photographs provide a candid, gut-wrenching record of ghetto prisoners suffering from extreme lack of housing, food, medicine, or sanitation and offer a tragic foreshadowing to what would befall the 500,000 Polish Jews locked up in a 2.4-square-mile area. In all likelihood, every person in every photograph was eventually gassed. Psychologically, why would a middle-aged man want to spend his birthday photographing a nonstop horror show of death? It would have been highly unusual for anyone at that time to spend the money for film, developing, and printing for so many photographs on any subject. Was Joest curious? Was he fascinated by the walking dead? Did Joest realize he was making photographs from a position of authority and his subjects were powerless to object? Did his own photographs make him contemplate his role in this abominable undertaking? In hindsight, Joest\u2019s direct photographs serve as a record of how German soldiers were able to compartmentalize the conformist, uncritical behavior that made the Holocaust possible.<a href=\"#_edn7\" name=\"_ednref\">[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The subtext in Joest\u2019s photographs is the abject failure of moral and political imagination, and act as reminders that choice is a precondition for morality. The images are exemplars of how groups of people (countries) that promote displays of rigid cultural and moral viewpoints, tend to be publicly cruel and privately corrupt. In any case, such unofficial photographs record the holistic disconnect between the glorious, imaginary Aryan world and its ruthless, oppressive reality. They also spotlight the rift between experiencing something and having an empathetic connection to what is actually happening.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6404\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6404\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6404\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.5-Joest_Two-Young-Girls.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"628\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.5-Joest_Two-Young-Girls.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.5-Joest_Two-Young-Girls-287x300.jpg 287w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.5-Joest_Two-Young-Girls-143x150.jpg 143w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6404\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.5 Two young women, one of whom is unconscious, on the street in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1941. Heinrich Joest. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6405\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6405\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6405\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.6-Joest_Undertaker_Crisp.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"619\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.6-Joest_Undertaker_Crisp.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.6-Joest_Undertaker_Crisp-291x300.jpg 291w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.6-Joest_Undertaker_Crisp-145x150.jpg 145w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6405\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.6. An undertaker in the Warsaw ghetto\u2019s Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street lifts the body of a woman for Heinrich Joest to show him how little it weighs, 1941. Heinrich Joest. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Joe Julius Heydecker, a German author and journalist, was ordered into Warsaw to join a propaganda unit. Anti-Nazi in outlook, Heydecker used a Kine Exakta, one of first successful 35mm single lens reflex cameras, to secretly take hundreds of photographs in the Warsaw Ghetto in spite of a 1941 Nazi prohibition against independent photographers. As a result of his mindset and professional training, his photographs are better composed and not as unrefined and harsh as Joest\u2019s, yet still convey a sense of abandonment and dreadful suffering. With the assistance of friends in his military unit and his wife, his film was kept safe even when the Gestapo raided his home. Later they were used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials and he was one of the few German journalists to report on the trials. After the war, Heydecker spoke on German radio about the atrocities he had witnessed. Even so, Heydecker claimed to be troubled by guilt, shame, and a sense of helplessness for not doing anything to help the ghettoized Jews. Eventually, he published his photographs in 1981.<a href=\"#_edn8\" name=\"_ednref\">[viii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In <em>On Photography<\/em> (1977) Susan Sontag wrote that photographs\u201c\u2026help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure\u201d and that photography could also be a way of \u201crefusing experience.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn9\" name=\"_ednref\">[ix]<\/a> Is it possible that such deliberate, unofficial photographs were attempts of denial? Maybe that by abstracting and pushing the Ghettos from their present lives these Germans were <em>Pandoras<\/em> in reverse, capturing the evil in front of them and safely securing it? Is it conceivable that the fear of unleashing such malignant forces again is why they delayed making their work public or was it just shame?<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6407\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6407\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6407\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.7-Heydecker_Boy-on-steps-300x221.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.7-Heydecker_Boy-on-steps-300x221.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.7-Heydecker_Boy-on-steps-150x111.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.7-Heydecker_Boy-on-steps.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6407\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.7 Jewish Boy Sitting on Steps, Warsaw Ghetto, circa 1941. Joe Julius Heydecker. Vad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In contrast, the intent of The Stroop Report<a href=\"#_edn10\" name=\"_ednref\">[x]<\/a> was clear. It was an official document prepared by General J\u00fcrgen Stroop for the SS (<em>Schutzstaffel<\/em>)<a href=\"#_edn11\" name=\"_ednref\">[xi]<\/a> chief Heinrich Himmler, recounting the German suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the liquidation of the ghetto in the spring of 1943. Originally titled <em>The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More!<\/em> (<em>Es gibt keinen j\u00fcdischen Wohnbezirk in Warschau mehr!<\/em>), it was made as a \u201csouvenir album\u201d for Himmler. It was presented by the chief U.S. prosecutor Robert H. Jackson at The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946 during his opening address. The assistant prosecutor who was addressing the persecution of the Jews referred to it as \u201cthe finest example of ornate German craftsmanship, leather bound, profusely illustrated [53 high-quality photographs plus additional photos that not included in the report], typed on heavy bond paper, the almost unbelievable recital of the proud accomplishment by Major General of Police Stroop.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn12\" name=\"_ednref\">[xii]<\/a> Aside from a dozen photographs clandestinely taken by Polish firefighter Leszek Grzywaczewski, the Stroop photographs are the only photos known to have been taken during the Ghetto Uprising.<a href=\"#_edn13\" name=\"_ednref\">[xiii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The unnamed photographers were allowed close to combat areas, recording Jews as they were captured from underground hiding places, and buildings that were set on fire and demolished. The album also features photos of Stroop in action\u2014 demonstrating a craving to enthusiastically display his cruel, sadistic nature to his superiors, saying look what a fine job I did eliminating these \u201cbandits\u201d and dregs of humanity. Finally, Stroop\u2019s short descriptive captions reflect his Nazi, racist urge to obliterate Jewish culture, property, and life. After the Nazi defeat, his own report delivers a staggering visual testimony to his own role and that of his men in the horrendous end of the Warsaw ghetto.<a href=\"#_edn14\" name=\"_ednref\">[xiv]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6408\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6408\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6408\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.8-Stroop-Report_3-Fighters.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"389\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.8-Stroop-Report_3-Fighters.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.8-Stroop-Report_3-Fighters-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.8-Stroop-Report_3-Fighters-150x97.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6408\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.8 The Stroop Report: These bandits offered armed resistance (original caption), 1943. Unknown photographer. Vad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>At first glance, Karl H\u00f6cker\u2019s photo album appears to contain snapshots of German soldiers enjoying themselves on leave.<a href=\"#_edn15\" name=\"_ednref\">[xv]<\/a> SS-Obersturmf\u00fchrer H\u00f6cker was the adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz from May 1944 until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945.<a href=\"#_edn16\" name=\"_ednref\">[xvi]<\/a> The photographs were taken at Solah\u00fctte, an SS resort about 18 miles\/30 km south of Auschwitz. Archival records disclose that the SS incentivized Auschwitz guards for doing exceptional work with a getaway to Solah\u00fctte. This \u201cvacationer\u201d album was made when the Auschwitz gas chambers were operating at their peak as more than 424,000 Hungarian Jews arrived over an eight-week period.<a href=\"#_edn17\" name=\"_ednref\">[xvii]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6409\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6409\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6409\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.9-Auschwitz-Album-Sing-along-300x204.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"204\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.9-Auschwitz-Album-Sing-along-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.9-Auschwitz-Album-Sing-along-150x102.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.9-Auschwitz-Album-Sing-along.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6409\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.9 An accordionist leads a sing-along for SS officers at their retreat at Solahuette outside Auschwitz, 1944. Unknown photographer. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>One disturbing photograph records an accordionist leading a sing-along for some 70 SS men. In the front row of the group are H\u00f6cker, SS-Hauptscharf\u00fchrer Otto Moll (the supervisor of the gas chambers), H\u00f6ss, Baer, Kramer, Franz H\u00f6ssler (commander of the female prisoner compound at Birkenau), and the \u201cAngel of Death\u201d himself, Dr. Josef Mengele. At the time this photograph was made the Germans knew the war was lost and still chose to continue their homicidal ways.<\/p>\n<p>A group of six photographs entitled <em>Hier gibt es Blaubeeren<\/em> (<em>Here There are Blueberries<\/em>) shows H\u00f6cker, who had just given bowls of fresh blueberries to twelve SS Helferinnen women sitting on a fence. They reciprocate by melodramatically overturning their empty bowls. The fifth woman from the left even produces mock tears in gratitude as the accordionist (barely visible in the right side of the frame) plays, while another Nazi relaxes in a lounge chair. That same day, 150 prisoners (Jews and non-Jews) arrived at Auschwitz. The SS selected 21 men and 12 women for work and immediately exterminated the others in the gas chambers.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6410\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6410\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6410\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.10-Auschwitz-Album-Blueberries.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.10-Auschwitz-Album-Blueberries.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.10-Auschwitz-Album-Blueberries-300x188.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.10-Auschwitz-Album-Blueberries-150x94.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6410\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.10 Members of the SS Helferinnen (female auxiliaries) and SS officer Karl H\u00f6cker invert their empty bowls to show they have eaten all their blueberries, 1944.<br \/>Unknown photographer. Auschwitz Album, 1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Such photographs, in a classic snapshot style, enshrine their \u201cfamily values\u201d and good-time memories, but here they raise the specter of unseen demons outside the camera\u2019s frame: how could these people commit robbery and mass murder<a href=\"#_edn18\" name=\"_ednref\">[xviii]<\/a> and then picnic on the same day? One possibility is that they considered themselves to be godlike, entitled to impose their will on the earth while being oblivious to the suffering of others. Anyone outside of their realm did not exist except as data collection points\u2014a component of the Nazi obsession with record keeping\u2014 redundant flunkies or slaves in terra incognito. These images capture an unknown place filled with Untermensch\u2014racially and socially inferior monsters whose persecution had reduced them to tatters.<\/p>\n<p>The only other known photo album from Auschwitz (published as the <em>Auschwitz Album<\/em> in 1980), specifically depicts the arrival of the Hungarian Jews and the SS\u2019s life and death selection process.<a href=\"#_edn19\" name=\"_ednref\">[xix]<\/a> The staged photographs were taken in May 1944, probably over the course of two days, by Ernst Hofmann and\/or Bernhard Walter, SS men who took ID photos and fingerprints of the brutalized inmates who were not sent directly to the gas chambers\u2014another coercive, humiliating measure imposed on prisoners. The album\u2019s 56 pages contain 193 photographs capturing the \u201cselection\u201d process on the \u201cRamp\u201d of life and death. On the Ramp, those sent to the right were immediately gassed and those directed left were selected as slave labor. What is not shown is the intimidation, threats, and violence the SS used on the Ramp and everywhere else they roamed, nor the gassing and burning of bodies, giving the intentionally false impression this was a smooth operation and that the people were not resisting.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6411\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6411\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6411\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.11-Women-children-on-Ramp.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"423\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.11-Women-children-on-Ramp.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.11-Women-children-on-Ramp-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.11-Women-children-on-Ramp-150x106.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6411\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.11 Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus await selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944.\u00a0 Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Why the album was made is unknown. One can speculate it was produced as an official record for higher level Nazis, as were photo albums from other concentration camps, and to testify to their zest for looting, slavery, and genocide,<a href=\"#_edn20\" name=\"_ednref\">[xx]<\/a> with the ultimate goal of creating the Aryan \u00dcbermensch\u2014the superior person, who justifies the existence of the human race,<a href=\"#_edn21\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxi]<\/a> by means of collaborative murder.<a href=\"#_edn22\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxii]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6412\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6412\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6412\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.12-Brothers-on-Ramp-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.12-Brothers-on-Ramp-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.12-Brothers-on-Ramp-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.12-Brothers-on-Ramp.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6412\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.12\u00a0 Jewish brothers from Subcarpathian Rus await selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944. Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>All of these albums selectively organize and transform actions into memories. They wanted these events to be remembered in a positive way, creating a narrative to be shared with their colleagues in the future. Instead, the Auschwitz photographs have become the central photographic symbols of unrepresentable genocide. This points out how photographs can contain a specific, but highly contrary, intent and viewpoint. For the Germans they proclaimed: Look what <em>we<\/em> did to those racially, socially, and physically defective untermenschen. Their casualties see these photographs as: Look at how <em>they<\/em> tried to destroy our humanity. Photographic interpretation is dependent upon point-of-view and knowledge outside the photographic frame, without which, one would not comprehend what was happening.<a href=\"#_edn23\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxiii]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6413\" style=\"width: 231px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6413\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6413\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.13-Hoecker-Christmas-Tree-221x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"221\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.13-Hoecker-Christmas-Tree-221x300.jpg 221w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.13-Hoecker-Christmas-Tree-110x150.jpg 110w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.13-Hoecker-Christmas-Tree.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 221px) 100vw, 221px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6413\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.13 SS officer Karl Hoecker lights a candle on a Christmas tree only weeks before the liberation of Auschwitz, 1944.<br \/>Unknown photographer. Auschwitz Album, 1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>For the Germans who once cheered at Nuremberg, the Auschwitz photographs contain the stark reminder of their complicit tribal madness, which resulted in some 17 million people being murdered<a href=\"#_edn24\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxiv]<\/a> in about 27 main concentration camps and at least 1,100 satellite camps.<a href=\"#_edn25\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxv]<\/a> Yet, the Germans were collectively able to look away, claiming to know nothing about these prisons even though numerous German soldiers, police, and civilians made photographs of the actions that were part of the Holocaust.<a href=\"#_edn26\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxvi]<\/a> Anthropologically, the Auschwitz photographs represent an individual\u2019s ability to pretend, to rationalize, and deny the reality of innate human cruelty for the sake of domination and greed\u2014stealing and selling their belongings, property, hair, their ground up bones, and skin,<a href=\"#_edn27\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxvii]<\/a> while professing that everything is normal. After their defeat, most Germans and their willing accomplices resumed their lives in business, government, industry, and at home as if nothing unusual ever happened, seemingly unphased by their moral and spiritual delinquencies.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6414\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6414\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6414\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.14-The-Ravine-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.14-The-Ravine-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.14-The-Ravine-150x106.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.14-The-Ravine.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6414\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.14 German guards and Ukrainian militia shooting a Jewish family in Miropol, Ukraine, 1941. Lubomir Skrovina. Security Services Archive.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In her book, <em>The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed<\/em> (2021) Wendy Lower details how an entire town killed their Jews. There were gunshots, \u201cyelling, screaming and howling.\u201d This was not the bureaucratic killing but mass murder at its most intimate: The Ukrainians \u201ctaunted the victims by name.\u2026 The victims were known to them from the dentist\u2019s office, the cobbler\u2019s shop, the soda fountain and the collective farm. They grabbed small children and babies by the legs and smashed their heads against the trees.\u201d There were Ukrainian teenage girls forced to dig mass graves; Nazi customs guards and volunteers, along with Ukrainian policemen, rounded up the Jews and forced them to the death site; Ukrainian neighbors plundered their homes and \u201cassaulted them\u2014throwing stones and bottles.\u201d Then there were the Ukrainian militia who, \u201carmed with clubs, tools and Russian rifles, chased Jews, bludgeoning some to death.\u2026 They chased young Jewish women, ripped off their clothes and raped them.\u201d Every single person in Miropol knew what had taken place. See: Wendy Lower. <em>The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed<\/em> (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021).<\/p>\n<p>The Auschwitz photographs also point out that images alone, with their fluid meaning dependent on context and personal interpretation, are not enough to change one\u2019s beliefs in the Master Race.<a href=\"#_edn28\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxviii]<\/a> Relying on their position of power, the overlord concentration camp mugs shot (aka <em>identity picture<\/em>) photographers utilized photography\u2019s specificity to reinforce the Nazi\u2019s pseudo-scientific, racist system of biometric measurements to identify untermenschen (subhuman, disgusting, inferior people). Proclaiming their superiority, they set out to eliminate all the <em>Others<\/em>.<a href=\"#_edn29\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxix]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6415\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6415\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6415\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.15-Mugs-Children-Auschwitz.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"390\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.15-Mugs-Children-Auschwitz.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.15-Mugs-Children-Auschwitz-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.15-Mugs-Children-Auschwitz-150x98.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6415\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.15 Children Auschwitz Mugshots, circa 1943-1944.\u00a0 Attributed to Wilhelm Brasse. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, O\u015bwi\u0119cim, Poland.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish professional photographer and a prisoner in Auschwitz who was assigned to photograph camp events, including medical experiments.<a href=\"#_edn30\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxx]<\/a> Brasse estimated that he took 40,000 to 50,000 \u201cidentity pictures\u201d from 1940 until being liberated in 1945.<a href=\"#_edn31\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxi]<\/a> The mug shots were part of the Nazi\u2019s systematized machinery that reduced its victims to objects, meant to encourage them to collude in their own victimization as they could see no other options. These photographs are visual symbols of the totalitarian aim to transform and control society by being an oppressive, pervasive presence, stamping out difference in every aspect of human life. Mugshots represent authority: there is a jailer and a prisoner. It is assumed that the prisoner has done something wrong, which is why the person is being incarcerated and punished. Taken during a moment of crisis and despair, these mugshots, made after the individuals had been dispossessed, stripped, shaved, and tattooed, serve as stilted collections of punitive biometric data, re-enforcing the notion that these were not people but numbers in a ledger book. They serve as what sociologist Michelle Brown calls \u201cpenal spectatorship\u201d\u2014ways of looking at arrested and imprisoned people as guilty and deserving of punishment.<a href=\"#_edn32\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_6416\" style=\"width: 212px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6416\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6416\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.16-He-is-to-blame-for-the-war-202x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"202\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.16-He-is-to-blame-for-the-war-202x300.jpg 202w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.16-He-is-to-blame-for-the-war-101x150.jpg 101w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.16-He-is-to-blame-for-the-war.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 202px) 100vw, 202px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6416\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.16 He is to blame for the war! Mj\u00f6lnir [Hans Schweitzer], 1943. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>This attitude led Polish-born German journalist and author Henryk Marcin Broder to write with bitter irony: \u201cThe Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn33\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxiii]<\/a> A broadening to this observation is that many Europeans continue to blame the Jews, and now the Israelis, for Auschwitz. Broder\u2019s defiant observation reflects the view that some Germans and their likeminded confederates want to free themselves from responsibility for Nazism. They wish to turn history upside down and inside out and present themselves as \u201cvictims\u201d and blame the Jews for the Holocaust.<\/p>\n<p>This raises the issue of whether a photograph, with its overabundance of data, is just a trace of the world or whether it could be the result of empirical reason? What scholars have concluded is that <em>none<\/em> of our beliefs, rational or otherwise, rely much on logical reasoning. Instead, we cherry-pick and rationalize what we absorb from the world to conform to our <em>emotional<\/em> preconceptions.<a href=\"#_edn34\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxiv]<\/a> Nevertheless, bearing witness with visual proof from the lenses of the perpetrators point is one reason why Holocaust photographs should remain in the public arena.<\/p>\n<p>Beneath the sorrow of the families and future generations of those who were murdered,<a href=\"#_edn35\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxv]<\/a> the Auschwitz photographs are about injustice, which evokes <strong><em>RAGE<\/em><\/strong>. RAGE against the silence of the Christian nations,<a href=\"#_edn36\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxvi]<\/a> of the world that allowed the Holocaust to happen and did little or nothing to stop it. Rage against the Nazi\u2019s tyrannical racial-cleansing philosophy of annihilation that wiped out Jewish European society, that believed the only good Jew is a dead Jew. Rage against the totalitarian, fear-based avatar of evil with its own corrupt and distorted laws and justice system. Rage against the senseless societal destruction of Yiddish culture (85% of the murdered were Yiddish speakers) and the ferocious annexation of artistic and cultural spheres. Rage against the doctors and pseudo scientists experimenting on human beings to prove their sham eugenic theory of a patriarchal master race. Rage against the selfish violence and terror of one\u2019s neighbors who expressed no empathy or emotional intelligence. Rage against how the majority of the brutal culprits were never brought to justice. Rage against the ossified rejection of participation and the embrace of Holocaust distortion, denial,<a href=\"#_edn37\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxvii]<\/a> and false revisionist history.<a href=\"#_edn38\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxviii]<\/a> And RAGE that over time these Holocaust photographs have done little to stem hate<a href=\"#_edn39\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxxix]<\/a> against a tiny minority.<a href=\"#_edn40\" name=\"_ednref\">[xl]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6417\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6417\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6417\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.17-Jews-Auschwitz-gas-chamber-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"432\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.17-Jews-Auschwitz-gas-chamber-.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.17-Jews-Auschwitz-gas-chamber--300x216.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.17-Jews-Auschwitz-gas-chamber--150x108.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6417\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.17 Hungarian Jews at entrance to the Auschwitz \u201cshowers\u201d gas chamber, 1944. Unknown photographer. Auschwitz Album, 1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,Washington, DC.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Finally, what these Nazi photographs indicate is that, given certain circumstances, humans and their national constructs make terrible, long-term decisions and few resist. As one absorbs these Nazi photographs, what one eventually sees is oneself, raising the unanswerable questions: Who would you be and what would you do?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/644217506?h=d291278504\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Afterward<\/p>\n<p>This ongoing project is flexible and subject to revision as it moves forward.<br \/>\nFeedback and suggestions are welcome.<br \/>\nSpecial thanks to Mark Jacobs and Gary Nickard, PhD for their editorial input.<br \/>\nNoteworthy gratitude to Lisa Murray for her copy-editing expertise.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn1\">[i]<\/a> These photographs are direct transcriptions of visual facts \u2013 what was facing the camera lens that were conventionally processed without any post-capture manipulation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn2\">[ii]<\/a> See: Benjam\u00edn Labatut, Translated by Adrian Nathan West. <em>When We Cease to Understand the World<\/em> (New York: New York Review Books, 2021).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn3\">[iii]<\/a> See: Nazi Medical Experiments, <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/nazi-medical-experiments\">https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/nazi-medical-experiments<\/a>. These so-called experiments have their roots in the biological determinist ideas of Sir Francis Galton, which originated in the 1880s and took hold in political, social, and scientific agendas in the US through the mid-twentieth century. Their goal was to eliminate those they deemed unfit for society that included the disabled, the mentally ill, the poor, and people of color.Eugenicists launched sterilization initiatives that targeted African American, Hispanic, and Native American women.<a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn4\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_edref\">[iv]<\/a> Sharon Wrobel. \u201cGerman Government to Spend $40 Million on Researching What Fuels Antisemitism, Racism,\u201d <em>The Algemeiner<\/em>, August 4, 2021, www.algemeiner.com\/2021\/08\/04\/german-government-to-spend-40-million-on-researching-what-fuels-antisemitism-racism\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn5\">[v]<\/a> Melissa Eddy. \u201cNine Barrack at Auschwitz Are Tagged with Antisemitic Slurs by Vandals\u201d <em>The New York Times<\/em>, October 6, 2021. www.nytimes.com\/2021\/10\/06\/world\/europe\/auschwitz-antisemitism-graffiti.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_edref\">[vi]<\/a> G\u00fcnther Schwarberg (ed). <em>In The Ghetto Of Warsaw: Photographs by Heinrich Jost<\/em> (G\u00f6ttingen, Germany: Steidl Verlag, 2001), unp.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn7\">[vii]<\/a> Some of Jost\u2019s photographs can be viewed at: https:\/\/steemit.com\/photography\/@raclariu\/a-day-in-the-warsaw-ghetto-rare-pictures-by-heinz-joest<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn8\">[viii]<\/a> Joe J. Heydecker<em> .Where is thy brother Abel? Documentary Photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto<\/em> (S\u00e3o Paulo: Atlantis Livros, 1981). Some images are available at: www.rferl.org\/a\/ghetto-warsaw-poland-jude\/24960526.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn6\"><\/a><a href=\"#_ednref\">[ix]<\/a> Susan Sontag. <em>On Photography<\/em> (New York: Farr, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 177.<\/p>\n<p>[x] See: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stroop_Report<a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn9\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn10\"><\/a><a href=\"#_ednref\">[xi]<\/a> See: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schutzstaffel and https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/ss<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\">[xii]<\/a> Robert E. Conot. <em>Justice at Nuremberg,<\/em> (New York: Carroll &amp; Graf Publishers, 1983), pp. 269-70.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn13\">[xiii]<\/a> On the back of one of his photographs Grzywaczewski commented on his powerlessness at being under German command as he watched people jumping out of windows to their deaths: \u201cWe weren\u2019t able to help them although [we had] the technical ability.\u201d Other fireman helped the SS round up Jews. See: http:\/\/somewereneighbors.ushmm.org\/#\/exhibitions\/policemen\/un1709\/description<a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn11\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn12\"><\/a><a href=\"#_ednref\">[xiv]<\/a> See: www.yadvashem.org\/yv\/en\/exhibitions\/warsaw_ghetto\/collection.asp<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\">[xv]<\/a> See: www.ushmm.org\/collections\/the-museums-collections\/collections-highlights\/auschwitz-ssalbum<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn16\">[xvi]<\/a> \u201cAuschwitz,\u201d https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/auschwitz<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn17\">[xvii]<\/a> See: https:\/\/www.yadvashem.org\/holocaust\/about\/fate-of-jews\/hungary.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn18\">[xviii]<\/a> Stolen belonging were stored in warehouses nicknamed \u201cKanada\u201d by the inmates because they saw them as the land of plenty.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn19\">[xix]<\/a> https:\/\/www.yadvashem.org\/yv\/en\/exhibitions\/album_auschwitz\/arrival.asp<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn20\">[xx]<\/a> Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The word \u201cgenocide\u201d is a very specific term coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900\u20131959) in 1944 to describe Nazi policies of systematic murder during the Holocaust, including the destruction of European Jews. Lemkin devised the word by combining <em>geno-<\/em>, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with <em>-cide<\/em>, from the Latin word for killing. More at: www.ushmm.org\/genocide-prevention\/learn-about-genocide-and-other-mass-atrocities\/what-is-genocide<a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn14\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn15\"><\/a><a href=\"#_ednref\">[xxi]<\/a> See: Friedrich Nietzsche. <em>Thus Spoke Zarathustra<\/em>: <em>A Book for All and None<\/em>, (1883).The Nazis unrecognizably twisted Nietzsche\u2019s allegorical meaning to their regressive ends.<a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn21\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn22\">[xxii]<\/a> There is no evidence that any member of the Axis forces, men or women, young or old, were made to murder by the Germans. See: Christopher R. Browning. <em>Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland<\/em> (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993). Wendy Lower. <em>Hitler\u2019s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields<\/em> (Boston &amp; New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn23\">[xxiii]<\/a> Tal Bruttmann. \u201cAnalysing Holocaust Photography: The <em>Auschwitz Album<\/em>,\u201d www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gRvxkyzjCZM<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn24\">[xxiv]<\/a> www.statista.com\/chart\/24024\/number-of-victims-nazi-regime\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn25\">[xxv]<\/a> https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nazi_concentration_camps Also, between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established thousands of camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos). The perpetrators used these sites for a range of purposes, including forced labor, detention of people thought to be enemies of the state, and for mass murder. See: https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/nazi-camps<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\">[xxvi]<\/a> \u201cEx-Nazi camp guard tells German court he is innocent, insists he \u2018knows nothing\u2019\u201d http:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/ex-nazi-camp-guard-tells-german-court-he-is-innocent-insists-he-knows-nothing\/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&amp;utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-10-08&amp;utm_medium=email<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn26\"><\/a><a href=\"#_ednref\">[xxvii]<\/a> \u201cResearchers find Nazi photo album bound with human skin,\u201d www.timesofisrael.com\/researchers-find-nazi-photo-album-bound-with-human-skin\/<a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn27\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn28\">[xxviii]<\/a> In Luke Holland\u2019s film, <em>Final Account<\/em> (2021), the past speaks to the present as Holland interviews former Nazi functionaries from Hitler\u2019s Third Reich as they evoke denial, evasion, and self-justification regarding their actions. It is a bleak reminder that the past is appallingly adjacent to the present. See: https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/162252\/holocaust-nazi-documentary-final-account-review<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn29\">[xxix]<\/a> The SS planned to set up a Jewish Museum in Prague with confiscated cultural and devotional objects and staffed by experts, in anticipation of the coming time when the Jewish people would be in the dustbin of history. See: www.jewishmuseum.cz\/en\/info\/about-us\/history-of-the-museum\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn30\">[xxx]<\/a> See: Luca Crippa &amp; Maurizio Onnis. <em>The Auschwitz Photographer<\/em>: <em>The Forgotten Story of the WW II Prisoner Who Documented Thousands of Lost Souls<\/em> (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2021).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn31\">[xxxi]<\/a> See: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wilhelm_Brasse<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn32\">[xxxii]<\/a> Michelle Brow. <em>The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle<\/em> (New York: New York University Press, 2009). Intro.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn33\">[xxxiii]<\/a> Henryk M. Broder. <em>Der ewige Antisemit<\/em>. Kapitel 5: <em>Der T\u00e4ter als Bew\u00e4hrungshelfer oder Die Deutschen werden den Juden Auschwitz nie verzeihen<\/em> (Frankfurt\/Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1986), p. 130.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn34\">[xxxiv]<\/a> See William J. Bernstein. <em>The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups<\/em> (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2021). Also, \u201cWhy false narratives so often trump reality,\u201d www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/why-false-narratives-so-often-trump-reality\/2021\/02\/24\/9678ad5c-64db-11eb-8c64-9595888caa15_story.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn35\">[xxxv]<\/a> Victims include Gypsies, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, homosexuals, Blacks, the physically and mentally disabled, political opponents of the Nazis, including Communists and Social Democrats, dissenting clergy, resistance fighters, prisoners of war, Slavic peoples, and individuals from the artistic communities whose opinions and works Hitler condemned. See: Susan Bachrach, <em>Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust <\/em>(Boston: Little Brown, 1995), 20.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn36\">[xxxvi]<\/a> Gerard S. Sloyan. \u201cChristian Persecution of Jews over the Centuries\u201d https:\/\/www.ushmm.org\/research\/about-the-mandel-center\/initiatives\/ethics-religion-holocaust\/articles-and-resources\/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries\/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn37\">[xxxvii]<\/a> \u201cPoland Passes Controversial Restitution Law, Sparking International Outcry,\u201d www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/poland-restitution-law-outcry-israel-united-states-1234601640\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn38\">[xxxviii]<\/a> Holocaust Denial: www.museumoftolerance.com\/education\/teacher-resources\/holocaust-resources\/what-is-holocaust-denial.html and https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Holocaust_denial<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"#_ednref\">xxxix<\/a>] See: \u201cState of Antisemitism in America 2020\u201d at: www.ajc.org\/AntisemitismReport2020 and \u201cExperiences and perceptions of antisemitism &#8211; Second survey on discrimination and hate crime against Jews in the EU\u201d at: https:\/\/fra.europa.eu\/en\/publication\/2018\/experiences-and-perceptions-antisemitism-second-survey-discrimination-and-hate Also, the FBI\u2019s 2020 Hate crime statistics show that of all US hate crimes motivated by religion, 57.5% targeted Jews. See: www.fbi.gov\/news\/pressrel\/press-releases\/fbi-releases-2020-hate-crime-statistics<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn40\">[xl]<\/a> Jews make up about 2.4% of the US population, yet are not officially recognized as a minority group in the US. See: www.pewforum.org\/2021\/05\/11\/the-size-of-the-u-s-jewish-population\/ Jews in Europe make up about 0.1% of the continent\u2019s population. See: www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/oct\/25\/europes-jewish-population-has-dropped-60-in-last-50-years Jews represent about 0.2% of the worldwide population. See: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jewish_population_by_country<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn39\"><\/a><strong>Additional information on figures<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.1 <em>Hyperinflation in Germany<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6400\" style=\"width: 106px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6400\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6400\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.1-Hyperinflation-Germany-96x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"96\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.1-Hyperinflation-Germany-96x150.jpg 96w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.1-Hyperinflation-Germany-191x300.jpg 191w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.1-Hyperinflation-Germany.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 96px) 100vw, 96px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6400\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.1<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unknown photographer. <em>Woman wearing a dress and hat made of German currency<\/em>, circa 1923.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: Hyperinflation affected the German Papiermark, the currency of the Weimar Republic, between 1921 and 1923. It caused considerable internal political instability and misery for the general populace. In addition, the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium provided Hitler with much to exploit and the ability to place blame. The destruction of the middle class\u2019s savings led to scenes like this of a woman wearing a dress and hat made of cash and children playing with stacks of worthless legal tender as if they were toy bricks. At one stage, 4.2 trillion German marks were worth a mere one American dollar. More at: www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-5088405\/When-cash-worthless-Germany-World-War.html<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.2 Palestinian rioters near Evyatar outpost put up flaming swastika, 2021.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6401\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6401\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6401\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.2-Palestinian-flaming-swastika-150x88.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"88\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.2-Palestinian-flaming-swastika-150x88.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.2-Palestinian-flaming-swastika-300x175.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.2-Palestinian-flaming-swastika.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6401\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.2<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Abduallah Bahsh\/Quds News Network\/Screenshot.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: Palestinian rioters threw explosives, burned tires, and pointed laser lights during the nightly riots, which began before the outpost was evacuated. The image is striking for its virulent antisemitism and its silence. They also burned an effigy of a religious Jew with a payot (sidelocks). Now imagine if the swastika were a cross and the effigy was of a Christian priest. ww.jpost.com\/breaking-news\/rioters-near-evyatar-outpost-put-up-flaming-swastika-676724<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.3 Public Deportation of Jews, Dobsina, Gemer, Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, circa 1942.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6402\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6402\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6402\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.3-Deportation-Dobsina-Gemer-Slovakia-Czechoslovakia--150x101.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"101\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.3-Deportation-Dobsina-Gemer-Slovakia-Czechoslovakia--150x101.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.3-Deportation-Dobsina-Gemer-Slovakia-Czechoslovakia--300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.3-Deportation-Dobsina-Gemer-Slovakia-Czechoslovakia-.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6402\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.3<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unknown photographer. Vad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel. (https:\/\/photos.yadvashem.org\/)<\/p>\n<p>Caption: The Nuremberg Racial Laws of 1935 robbed the Jewish population of most of their civil and property rights. Jews were forced to wear a yellow star and bear the first names \u201cSara\u201d or \u201cIsrael.\u201d Their assets and shops were \u201cAryanised\u201d by the Germans and locals who would then take over the possessions and properties of the vanquished. In this seemingly mundane photograph, context is everything\u2014local Jews were publicly rounded up and deported to Auschwitz as their neighbors watched. Some 100,000 Slovak Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Vad Vashem has thousands of photographs depicting scenes like this throughout German-occupied Europe. The witnesses would later claim: \u2018We had no idea this was happening.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.4 A destitute little girl comforts her little sister, who lies unconscious in her lap, 1941.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6403\" style=\"width: 156px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6403\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6403\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.4-Joest_Sisters--146x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"146\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.4-Joest_Sisters--146x150.jpg 146w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.4-Joest_Sisters--292x300.jpg 292w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.4-Joest_Sisters-.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 146px) 100vw, 146px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6403\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.4<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Heinrich Joest. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: Joest\u2019s original caption reads: \u201cThese were clearly sisters. If the younger one was dead, I could not say. She did not move.\u201d Photographs at: www.ushmm.org\/search\/results.php?q=Heinrich+joest&amp;q__src=&amp;q__grp=&amp;q__typ=&amp;q__mty=<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.5 <em>Two young women, one of whom is unconscious, on the street in the Warsaw Ghetto<\/em>, 1941.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6404\" style=\"width: 153px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6404\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6404\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.5-Joest_Two-Young-Girls-143x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"143\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.5-Joest_Two-Young-Girls-143x150.jpg 143w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.5-Joest_Two-Young-Girls-287x300.jpg 287w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.5-Joest_Two-Young-Girls.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 143px) 100vw, 143px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6404\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.5<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Heinrich Joest. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: Joest\u2019s original caption reads: \u201cUnder ripped advertisements an unconscious woman lay against the wall. Another person attempted to care for her. <em>She looked at me as if she expected me to help<\/em>\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.6<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6405\" style=\"width: 155px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6405\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6405\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.6-Joest_Undertaker_Crisp-145x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"145\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.6-Joest_Undertaker_Crisp-145x150.jpg 145w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.6-Joest_Undertaker_Crisp-291x300.jpg 291w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.6-Joest_Undertaker_Crisp.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 145px) 100vw, 145px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6405\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.6.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>An undertaker in the Warsaw ghetto\u2019s Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street lifts the body of a woman for Heinrich Joest to show him how little it weighs, 1941. Heinrich Joest. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: Joest\u2019s caption reads: \u201cThe dead were not heavy, as one corpse-bearer showed me &#8211; although I had not asked him to &#8211; in front of the buildings of the Jewish cemetery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.7 Jewish Boy Sitting on Steps, Warsaw Ghetto, circa 1941.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6407\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6407\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6407\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.7-Heydecker_Boy-on-steps-150x111.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"111\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.7-Heydecker_Boy-on-steps-150x111.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.7-Heydecker_Boy-on-steps-300x221.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.7-Heydecker_Boy-on-steps.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6407\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.7<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Joe Julius Heydecker. Vad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: <em>In the book of this work, Where is thy brother Abel? Documentary Photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto<\/em> (1981) Heydecker wrote: <em>\u201cI find it hard to explain why nearly forty years have passed before I was able to publish these pictures. I believe I simply had not strength enough to write the text, although I tried several times. I still feel unable to do so. Now I do what I can to set down what is seared into my memory, weak as it may be, because time is running out.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.8 The Stroop Report: <em>These bandits offered armed resistance<\/em> (original caption), 1943.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6408\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6408\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6408\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.8-Stroop-Report_3-Fighters-150x97.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"97\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.8-Stroop-Report_3-Fighters-150x97.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.8-Stroop-Report_3-Fighters-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.8-Stroop-Report_3-Fighters.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6408\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.8<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unknown photographer. Vad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: This photograph was taken by a German photographer at Nowolipie Street looking east, near intersection with Smocza Street. In the background, a ghetto wall with a gate can be seen. Jewish women and men took part in resistance fighting. The woman to the right is Hasia Szylgold-Szpiro, who appears stoically defiant. The woman in the center has no shoes and all appear to have been living in dreadful conditions. The insurgents\u2019 defiance surprised the Germans and continued for a month. They used any means possible including incendiary bottles and grenades. Unable to quell the rebellion, the Germans, with the help of Ukrainians and Latvians, burned down all the buildings in the so-called \u201cclosed district.\u201d Using cannons and machines guns, the executioners timed the Ghetto massacre to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Passover and as a \u201cgift\u201d for the F\u00fchrer\u2019s birthday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.9 An accordionist leads a sing-along for SS officers at their retreat at Solahuette outside Auschwitz, 1944.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6409\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6409\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6409\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.9-Auschwitz-Album-Sing-along-150x102.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"102\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.9-Auschwitz-Album-Sing-along-150x102.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.9-Auschwitz-Album-Sing-along-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.9-Auschwitz-Album-Sing-along.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6409\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.9<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unknown photographer. <em>Auschwitz Album<\/em>, 1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: Pictured in the front row are Karl Hoecker, Otto Moll, Rudolf Hoess, Richard Baer, Josef Kramer (standing slightly behind Hoessler and partially obscured), Franz Hoessler, Josef Mengele, Anton Thumann, and Walter Schmidetzki. Hermann Buch is in the center. Konrad Wiegand, head of the Fahrbereitschaft (car and truck pool) is in the middle. Based on the officers visiting Solahutte, it is surmised that the photographs were taken to honor Rudolf Hoess, who completed his murderous tenure as garrison senior on July 29, 1944.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.10 Members of the SS Helferinnen (female auxiliaries) and SS officer Karl H\u00f6cker invert their empty bowls to show they have eaten all their blueberries, 1944.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6410\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6410\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6410\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.10-Auschwitz-Album-Blueberries-150x94.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"94\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.10-Auschwitz-Album-Blueberries-150x94.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.10-Auschwitz-Album-Blueberries-300x188.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.10-Auschwitz-Album-Blueberries.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6410\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.10<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unknown photographer. <em>Auschwitz Album<\/em>, 1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.11<\/strong> <strong>Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus await selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6411\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6411\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6411\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.11-Women-children-on-Ramp-150x106.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"106\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.11-Women-children-on-Ramp-150x106.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.11-Women-children-on-Ramp-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.11-Women-children-on-Ramp.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6411\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.11<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: In contrast to fun-loving SS Helferinnen, previously pictured at Solahutte, among those already abused civilians are Irina Berkovits (age 37) and her son Adalbert (age 5); both perished. Also pictured are Hajnal Klein and her four daughters Lili (age 18), Herczi (age 15), Renee (age 12) and Iren (age 7). Hajnal, Renee and Iren were killed upon arrival. Lili and Herczi survived.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.12 Jewish brothers from Subcarpathian Rus await selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944. <\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6412\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6412\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6412\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.12-Brothers-on-Ramp-150x112.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"112\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.12-Brothers-on-Ramp-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.12-Brothers-on-Ramp-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.12-Brothers-on-Ramp.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6412\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.12<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: Pictured are Israel and Zelig Jacob, aged nine and eleven. They were gassed shortly after arrival.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.13 SS officer Karl Hoecker lights a candle on a Christmas tree only weeks before the liberation of Auschwitz, 1944.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6413\" style=\"width: 120px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6413\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6413\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.13-Hoecker-Christmas-Tree-110x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"110\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.13-Hoecker-Christmas-Tree-110x150.jpg 110w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.13-Hoecker-Christmas-Tree-221x300.jpg 221w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.13-Hoecker-Christmas-Tree.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 110px) 100vw, 110px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6413\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.13<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unknown photographer. <em>Auschwitz Album<\/em>, 1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: The original caption reads: \u201cJulfeier 1944\u201d (the Nazi name for a pre-Christian Yule celebration).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.14 <\/strong><strong>German guards and Ukrainian militia shooting a Jewish family in Miropol, Ukraine, 1941. <\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6414\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6414\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6414\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.14-The-Ravine-150x106.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"106\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.14-The-Ravine-150x106.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.14-The-Ravine-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.14-The-Ravine.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6414\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.14<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Lubomir Skrovina. Security Services Archive.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: Lubomir Skrovina was an exceptional Slovakian soldier who took this photograph with the full knowledge of his German superiors. However, unlike most of the willing executioners he did not take it in service of the Germans. Skrovina joined the Resistance and took this photograph as an act of defiance. He smuggled such cold-blooded, merciless images back home to his wife for use by the anti-Nazi forces. Later, he was released from further military duty; hid Jews in his home; helped some escape; and allied with the antifascist Slovakian uprising of 1944.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.15 Children Auschwitz Mugshots, circa 1943-1944. <\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6415\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6415\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6415\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.15-Mugs-Children-Auschwitz-150x98.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"98\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.15-Mugs-Children-Auschwitz-150x98.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.15-Mugs-Children-Auschwitz-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.15-Mugs-Children-Auschwitz.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6415\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.15<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Attributed to Wilhelm Brasse. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, O\u015bwi\u0119cim, Poland.<\/p>\n<p>This attitude led Polish-born German journalist and author Henryk Marcin Broder to write with bitter irony: \u201cThe Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.\u201d<a name=\"_ednref\"><\/a><a href=\"#_edn33\">[xxxiii]<\/a> A broadening to this observation is that many Europeans continue to blame the Jews, and now the Israelis, for Auschwitz. Broder\u2019s defiant observation reflects the view that some Germans and their likeminded confederates want to free themselves from responsibility for Nazism. They wish to turn history upside down and inside out and present themselves as \u201cvictims\u201d and blame the Jews for the Holocaust.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 2.16 He is to blame for the war! <\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6416\" style=\"width: 111px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6416\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6416\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.16-He-is-to-blame-for-the-war-101x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"101\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.16-He-is-to-blame-for-the-war-101x150.jpg 101w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.16-He-is-to-blame-for-the-war-202x300.jpg 202w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.16-He-is-to-blame-for-the-war.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 101px) 100vw, 101px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6416\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2.16<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Mj\u00f6lnir [Hans Schweitzer], 1943. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p>Caption: The Nazis sought to provoke hatred of Germany\u2019s Jews by transforming the popular perception of them from fellow citizens into domestic, back-stabbing enemies guilty of warmongering and betraying Germany from within. It made no difference that many Jews considered themselves to be full-fledged German citizens who made major contributions in German culture and science, including multiple Nobel Prize winners. The result was an exodus of some 2,600 Jewish scientists from Germany to Britain and America. Britain gained 27 Nobel scientists, the U.S. 47. Germany had dominated science until 1935; after that date, its place was taken by the United States. See: www.nydailynews.com\/life-style\/nazis-heil-history-nobel-prize-winners-article-1.2762671<\/p>\n<p>Earlier threads may be accessed: <a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6312\">Theme table of content<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Return to theme table of content Return to VJIC table of content Thread #2 Nazi Photographic Perspectives \u00a9 Robert Hirsch 2021 VASA Journal on Images and Culture (VJIC), Theme Editor and Writer \u00a0 A man said to the universe: \u201cSir, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6180\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88893,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6180","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2KsSU-1BG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6180"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6519,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6180\/revisions\/6519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}