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The
Auschwitz Album is the only
surviving visual evidence of the process of mass murder at
Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is a unique
document and was donated to Yad Vashem by
Lilly
Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier.
The photos
were taken at the end of May or beginning of June 1944, either by
Ernst Hofmann or by Bernhard Walter, two SS men whose task was to
take ID photos and fingerprints of the inmates (not of the Jews who
were sent directly to the gas chambers). The photos show the arrival
of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia. Many of them came from the
Berehov Ghetto, which itself was a collecting point for Jews from
several other small towns.
Early
summer 1944 was the apex of the deportation of Hungarian Jewry. For
this purpose a special rail line was extended from the railway
station outside the camp to a ramp inside Auschwitz Many of the
photos in the album were taken on the ramp. The Jews then went
through a selection process, carried out by SS doctors and wardens.
Those considered fit for work were sent into the camp, where they
were registered, deloused and distributed to the barracks. The rest
were sent to the gas chambers. They were gassed under the guise of a
harmless shower, their bodies were cremated and the ashes were
strewn in a nearby swamp. The Nazis not only ruthlessly exploited
the labor of those they did not kill immediately, they also looted
the belongings the Jews brought with them. Even gold fillings were
extracted from the mouths of the dead by a special detachment of
inmates. The personal effects the Jews brought with them were sorted
by inmates and stored in an area referred to by the inmates as
"Canada": the ultimate land of plenty.
The photos
in the album show the entire process except for the killing itself.
The purpose
of the album is unclear. It was not intended for propaganda
purposes, nor does it have any obvious personal use. One assumes
that it was prepared as an official reference for a higher
authority, as were photo albums from other concentration camps.
Lilly never
hid the album and news of its existence was published many times.
She was even called to present it as testimony at the Auschwitz
trials in Frankfurt during the 1960s. She kept it all the years
until the famous Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld visited her in 1980,
and convinced her to donate the album to Yad Vashem.
In 1994 the
album was restored in Yad Vashem's conservation laboratory and
information on each one of the photos was typed into the
computerized databank of the archive. The staff of the archive was
able to compare and match the pictures with aerial photos taken by
the US Army Air Force on several occasions in 1944-45. In 1999 the
entire album was scanned with highest quality digital equipment.
There are
56 pages and 193 photos in the album. Some of the original pictures,
presumably those given by Lilly to survivors who had identified
relatives in the photographs, are missing. One of these pictures was
recently donated to Yad Vashem.
Further
reference:
Encyclopedia
of the Holocaust, Tel-Aviv,
1990.
Gilbert,
Martin, Auschwitz and the Allies, New-York, 1981.
Greif,
Gideon,
We Wept without Tears, Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from
Auschwitz
Yale University Press and The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for
Contemporary Judaic Studies, University of Miami, 2005
Hoess,
Rudolf, Commandant of Auschwitz, Cleveland, 1959.
Klarsfeld,
Serge (ed.), The Auschwitz Album. Lilly Jacob's Album,
New-York, 1980.
Kraus, Ota
& Kulka, Erich, The Death Factory: Document on Auschwitz,
New-York, 1966.
To purchase the Auschwitz
Album from Yad Vashem Publications,
click here
To see the Album,
Click Here
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