The Auschwitz Album A Book Based Upon an Album Discovered by a Concentration Camp Survivor, Lili Meier text by Peter Hellman Random House. Introduction and Accompanying Text in the English Edition by Peter Hellman. Published by Random House. New York, 1981 – First English Edition. One of the Most Important Historical Documentations of the 20th Century.
The Auschwitz Album is the most comprehensive visual documentation of the systematic mass murder that took place at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The album contains 200 photographs, capturing the entire selection process and preparations for extermination of a Jewish transport. Unlike other testimonies, which were collected and photographed after the liberation of the camps, this documentation is unique in that it records the routine of the extermination process as it occurred in real-time. The photographs were taken in late May and early June 1944 by two SS soldiers, Bernhard Walter and Ernst Hoffmann, whose task was to photograph identification pictures and collect fingerprints of prisoners. The documented transport arrived at the camp’s railway platform in May 1944, as part of the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry. The photographs show the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, many of whom were deported from the Berehovo Ghetto, which itself had served as a collection point for Jews from several smaller towns. The images capture Jews just moments after disembarking from the overcrowded train cars, standing on the ramp at the Auschwitz-Birkenau railway platform. The fear and shock on their faces reflect the trauma of the brutal journey. The transport’s passengers were unaware that they had arrived at a death camp, as evidenced by the images of those waiting in line for the gas chambers, still oblivious to their fate. The album provides a detailed visual record of: The arrival of the transport at the extermination camp. The camp personnel preparing for the transport’s arrival. The selection process, dividing those deemed fit for forced labor (typically younger individuals) from those sent to immediate extermination. Separation of men and women. Confiscation and sorting of Jewish belongings, later shipped to Germany. Preparations for the physical annihilation of most deported Jews. Those found fit for labor were registered, their heads shaved and disinfected, and they were assigned to barracks. The rest were sent directly to the gas chambers. Under the false pretense of a shower, they were murdered with poison gas, their bodies incinerated, and their ashes scattered into a nearby marsh.
The original album, now housed at Yad Vashem, was discovered after the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp by Lili Jacob (later Zalmanovitz), a Holocaust survivor who had arrived on the very transport documented in the album. Lili was the sole survivor of her entire family, all of whom perished in the camp. She found the album by chance in Dora, while searching for warm clothing after the war. When the people in her town learned that she possessed photographs from Auschwitz, they requested some of the images, and to this day, the photos she distributed have not been recovered. In 1980, Lili Jacob donated the album to Yad Vashem.
[2] XXXIII, 167 pages. Hardcover with the original dust jacket, all intact. Very good condition.
