New on Yad Vashem Website:
Expanded version of
Auschwitz Album
Yad Vashem has published an expanded
version of the Auschwitz album, the only surviving visual evidence of
the process of mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau, on its web site,
www.yadvashem.org, to coincide
with the 57th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (27th
January).
The on-line Auschwitz Album displays
58 photographs documenting the day-to-day functioning of
Auschwitz-Birkenau, taken in early summer 1944 by SS men, responsible at
Auschwitz for the identification and fingerprinting procedure, of the
Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia. Also included in the
on-line presentation are testimonies, aerial photos taken of the camp
between April – December 1944, and photographs of its construction.
The main
deportation of Hungarian Jewry took place in early summer 1944, and for
this purpose a special railway line was built which extended from the
station outside the camp to a ramp within Auschwitz. It was here, before
the selection process took place, that many of the album’s photographs
were taken. The photographer followed the new arrivals through the
selection process, to their “final destination”, although he did not
record acts of violence. Those deemed fit to work were processed for
slave labor, and those deemed unfit, to Birkenau (birch valley), the
area directly in front of the killing facilities to unwittingly await
imminent death. The album’s purpose is unclear, as it was not intended
for propaganda. However it is assumed that it was created as a method of
reference for a higher authority, in keeping with albums from other
concentration camps.
 |
The photographs
which make up the Auschwitz Album were discovered by the late Lily
Jacob - Zelmanovic Meier, deported from Bilke - a small town in the
Carpathian Mountains - in April 1945 on her liberation from
Auschwitz
by the US army.
The album had been given the seemingly innocent title “Resettlement
of Hungarian Jews” by the Nazis. Lily kept the photographs in her
safekeeping until the 1980’s when Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld
convinced her to donate them to Yad Vashem. |
Yad Vashem restored
the album in 1994 in its conservation laboratory, computerized the vital
information for its Archives, and matched the aerial photographs taken
by the US Army Air Force in 1944 and 1945 with those in the Auschwitz
Album.
For further
information:
Lisa Davidson-Oren
/ Foreign Media Liaison, Yad
Vashem
Tel: 02/6443410/2
Blick zum Hadasah-Krankenhaus, von Jad vaSchem
haGalil onLine
22-01-2002 |
