Chilling photo album reveals how SS officer who helped run Auschwitz wanted to remember the concentration camp

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The image exhibits a gaggle of ladies having fun with blueberries subsequent to a person, smiling. Another man poses at the again, enjoying an accordion. 

The picture is one in every of 116 images in an album that belonged to an SS officer who helped run the day-to-day operations of Auschwitz. The album would not present any prisoners or gasoline chambers, as an alternative it exhibits a few of the most notorious officers at the camp seemingly having fun with themselves: singing, socializing, and lighting a Christmas tree at a time when extra Jews have been being exterminated at the camp than some other interval throughout the Holocaust. 

Acclaimed playwright and director Moises Kaufman spent 14 years making a play about the album after seeing the photos. Many of Kaufman’s members of the family died at Auschwitz and he was struck most by the complete lack of regret proven by the Nazis in the album.

“Seeing that in a photograph so clearly articulated is terrifying,” he mentioned. “This is terrifying because they all look so much like us.”

How the Nazi photo album was discovered, recognized after WWII

A U.S. counterintelligence officer mentioned he discovered the photo album inside a trash can in an deserted condo in 1946 in war-torn Frankfurt, Germany, the place he was searching down Nazi battle criminals. Decades later, the man donated it to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC on one condition- that he stay nameless. 

Museum officers weren’t certain what to make of the album after they acquired it in 2007, nevertheless it turned out to be a uncommon private scrapbook of a Nazi who helped run Auschwitz, the place about 1.1 million folks — principally Jews — have been murdered between 1940 and 1945. Historian Rebecca Erbelding and her colleagues at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum spent months analyzing the album to determine who made it and what it confirmed.

“I didn’t see any trains. I didn’t see anything I recognized. It was maybe the third time flipping through it,” she mentioned. “And that’s when I saw Josef Mengele.”

Rebecca Erbelding and Anderson Cooper
Rebecca Erbelding and Anderson Cooper

60 Minutes


No footage of Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz had ever been discovered earlier than, in accordance to Erbelding. Mengele was identified at the camp as the “Angel of Death” as a result of he performed ugly medical experiments on prisoners, totally on youngsters, and chosen who was match for work and who would go to the gasoline chambers.

Historians additionally discovered Richard Baer on the album’s first web page. He was the final commandant of Auschwitz, which helped them understand the man subsequent to him was his deputy, Karl Höcker. It turned out the album was Höcker’s private scrapbook of his time serving to run the camp.

The authentic pages of the album are actually saved in a high-security, climate-controlled facility in Maryland. 

What the images from Auschwitz present

Few images of Auschwitz exist. The Nazis labored arduous to conceal their crimes, and nobody had ever seen photos like the ones in the Höcker album. Höcker bought to Auschwitz in May of 1944. 

He was a struggling financial institution teller earlier than the battle, so changing into an SS officer at Auschwitz was thought-about a giant step up. Höcker helped run the every day operations of the camp and was, as Erbelding places it, a “crucial cog in the Nazi killing machine.”

The 116 footage in the album present Auschwitz as Höcker wanted to remember it. One image exhibits Höcker together with his canine, Favorit. Others present Christmas 1944. Höcker, who possible knew Soviet troops have been marching in direction of Auschwitz to liberate it, may be seen lighting the camp’s tree.

Pictures revealed one thing else museum officers hadn’t seen earlier than; the SS constructed a trip resort, known as Solahütte, at Auschwitz. A sequence of images present a gathering of prime SS officers there in July 1944. Erbelding believes it was a celebration the place Nazis have been congratulating themselves for efficiently murdering greater than 350,000 Hungarian Jews in simply 55 days. 

An Auschwitz survivor and a Nazi’s grandson react to photo album

While Höcker and different officers loved their lives, prisoners at Auschwitz have been being slaughtered. Irene Weiss, now 93, was 13 when she arrived at Auschwitz — simply at some point after Höcker began working at the camp. Her mother and father and 4 of her siblings have been killed, however she and her older sister survived. For eight months, they’d to work outdoors a gasoline chamber sorting belongings of the useless. They watched hundreds of ladies and youngsters stroll into the gasoline chambers.

Weiss mentioned she could not cry. 

“Tears are for normal pain,” she mentioned. 

Weiss wasn’t shocked by the images in Höcker’s album. “They were taught that they’re doing it for a higher purpose,” she mentioned. “I knew that they were animals.”

Irene Weiss
Irene Weiss

60 Minutes


When the footage have been launched in 2007, they made headlines round the world. In Germany, Tilman Taube noticed an article about them whereas on his lunch break and was shocked to see that his grandfather, Dr. Heinz Baumkötter, was in the album. Baumkötter was the head doctor at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Taube had identified for years that his grandfather was a assassin – sending hundreds to be killed at different camps – and had achieved medical experiments on prisoners, however he did not know precisely why his grandfather had been at Auschwitz. 

Taube linked with Erbelding and discovered that he had been a part of a high-level delegation of camp medical doctors that toured the killing services there. Taube realized how deeply concerned his grandfather was in the Holocaust. He now helps the museum seek for extra images and paperwork by reaching out to different descendants of Nazis. 

“There are still many, many facts that are undiscovered,” Taube mentioned. “You want to be part of some kind of movement that helps preventing things like that from happening again.”

How the Nazi photo album grew to become the topic of a play

Kaufman wanted to write his play, which opened final week off Broadway, due to a number of photos from the album exhibiting Karl Höcker giving his secretaries blueberries. The caption learn: “Here there are blueberries,” and that grew to become the title of Kaufman’s play. One photo specifically confirmed a girl pretending to cry as a result of she’d completed her blueberries. 

Anderson Cooper with Amanda Gronich and Moises Kaufman
Anderson Cooper with Amanda Gronich and Moises Kaufman

60 Minutes


“So she’s so sad because she’s run out of blueberries,” Kaufman mentioned. “And outside of the frame, there’s 1.1 million people who are being killed. So how do you lead your daily life and at the same time participate in one of the largest killing machines in the history of mankind?”

His Pulitzer-nominated play, co-created together with his longtime collaborator, Amanda Gronich, is predicated on the true story of the photo album. It additionally spends time exploring the perspective of Nazi descendants and the motivation of the Nazis. They did not get up every morning pondering, ‘I’m an evil monster. I’m going to do evil, monstrous issues,'” Gronich said. “They awakened every day, and so they went about their lives crammed with justifications and beliefs in what they have been doing.”

Kaufman said the play makes audience members ask questions of themselves, including: What am I capable of doing? 

“When the viewers is available in, they sit right here and so they go, ‘Who would I’ve been in that image?'” Kaufman mentioned.

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