Extermination of Polish Jews – Album of Pictures, published by Central Jewish Historical Committee in Poland - Lodz, 1945. Hebrew, Polish, Russian, English, French, Yiddish. An early photo album documenting the Nazi atrocities in stages. One of the most important visual publications ever released documenting the Nazi horror and the destruction of European Jewry immediately after their occurrence.
In the album, which was published in Lodz at the end of the war, 252 hard black-and-white photos (on 104 plates) show the destruction of Eastern European Jewry in its various stages - the persecution with the entry of the Nazis into Poland, anti-Semitic propaganda, the segregation of the Jews and the humiliation and torture in the ghettos, the deportation to the camps, and extermination in the death camps. Many of the photographs appearing in the album were found by the Germans themselves. They were filmed at the crime places and then given to private photographers for development. The Germans warned about returning the photo plates and copying them, but the photographers, knowing clearly of the danger involved, put themselves at risk and kept copies with them, and that's how they were kept. "Besides the "spontaneous" pogrom, the burning of the synagogues, slavery, hard labor accompanied by beatings and severe torture, etc. - the Germans tried to humiliate the Jews in the eyes of the non-Jewish crowd, gradually accustoming them to the idea that the Jew stands outside of all law and justice, his life is unclaimed and his blood is permissible". (from the introduction).
At the end of the album are photos documenting "The Life and Activity of Guerilla Detachments" and life after liberation. Two pictures show blueprints of the extermination camps in Belzec and Sobibor ("Attempted reconstruction of the extermination camp in Belzec", "Attempted reconstruction of the extermination camp in Sobibor").
The photos are accompanied by an introduction by Gershon Taffet, and a short text by Dr. Phillip Friedman that briefly introduces the Holocaust documentation project, of which the album is a part. On the last pages, there are detailed explanations in Polish and English about the photos in the album and their origin.
[21], 104, [15] page, album: 34X25 cm. Stains on some of the album pages. Binding reinforced at the edges with black adhesive paper. general condition good.
