Returning to Auschwitz: Photographs from Hell

 

General Photography

“The photograph is among the most striking I have ever seen. I came across it first in the Auschwitz museum on a day when snow was falling across the empty camp. […] For days after viewing the photographs, I could not shake the girl?s expression from my mind. She is around 16 years of age and looking directly into the camera. The girl has only recently arrived at the camp. On her lower lip there is a cut. Her eyes stare directly into the lens and the fear transmits itself across the decades.” (source) “Wilhelm Brasse was put through daily torture photographing the horrors of the Auschwitz death camp but the young Pole pulled a fast one over his Nazi captors to make sure the terrible events were not forgotten. Brasse, now 91, had to take pictures of women whose genitals were butchered by Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele, of Jewish prisoners arriving at the camp to go to the gas chamber and even of the camp brothel where women were turned into sex slaves. Somehow, Brasse survived the war.” (source) Find a short video interview with Wilhelm Brasse here; and there are two other noteworthy articles here and here.