Auschwitz-Birkenau
became the killing centre where the largest numbers of
European Jews were killed. By mid 1942, mass gassing of Jews
using Zyklon-B began at Auschwitz, where extermination was
conducted on an industrial scale with some estimates running
as high as three million persons eventually killed through
gassing, starvation, disease, shooting, and burning. 9 out
of 10 were Jews. In addition, Gypsies, Soviet POWs, and
prisoners of all nationalities died in the gas chambers.
The Auschwitz Album is a unique photographic record
of the Holocaust
of World War II. A collection of photographs taken inside a
Nazi death camp, it is the only surviving pictorial evidence
of the extermination process from inside the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The album has 56
pages and 193 photographs. Originally, it had more photos,
but before being donated to the Holocaust Museum in Israel, Yad
Vashem, some of them were given to survivors who
recognized relatives and friends.
The photos were taken at the end of May or beginning of June
1944 and follow the processing of newly arrived Hungarian
Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, many of them from the Berehov
Ghetto. They document the disembarkation of the Jewish
prisoners from the train boxcars, followed by the selection
process, performed by doctors of the SS and SS-men 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 tree grove just outside
of the crematoria where they were made to wait before being
killed.
In the words of Oliver
Lustig:
"...
that was to be "the last stay of their lives."
Tens of feet apart, after the bushes of trees, the
well-ventilated crematoria were awaiting them with an open
door of the disrobing room and, with the gas chamber ready
to go with a capacity for 2000 people. The 15 ovens built
above the gas chamber were on so of not wasting any
unnecessary time with restarting them."
The
photographs of the Auschwitz Album show the entire
process except for the killing itself - you find more photos
here.
The album's survival is remarkable, given the strenuous
efforts made by the Nazis to keep the Final Solution a
secret. Also remarkable is the story of its discovery. Lilly
Jacob, later Lilly 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. Lilly
Jacob was 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, Lilly Jacob found the album in a cupboard beside her
bed. Inside, she found pictures of her relatives and others
from her community.
Lilly Jacob never hid the Auschwitz 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.
Sources:
- Material licensed under the
GNU
Free Documentation License from Wikipedia
- The
Auschwitz Album at Yad Vashem
- Photos
from the Auschwitz Album with commentary by Oliver Lustig
- Klarsfeld, Serge (ed.), The Auschwitz Album. Lilly
Jacob's Album, New-York, 1980.
Beate
and Serge Klarsfeld |
