Undzer Khurbn in Bild – “Our Destruction in Pictures”, a harrowing photographic album documenting the destruction of European Jewry, edited by Raphael Olawski, Paul Trepman, and David Rosenthal. Published by the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British Zone – “Undzer Shtime”, Bergen-Belsen, December 1946. Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and German.
The album contains 115 black-and-white photographs printed on thick paper, some extremely difficult to view, documenting the destruction of European Jewry from the rise of the Third Reich to the liberation of the death camps. The pages include harsh images from within the ghettos in Poland, the Aktionen and selections, the expulsion of Jews from their homes and the confiscation of their property, starvation in the ghettos, the Jewish police in the ghettos, Nazi abuse of Jews, deportations to the death camps, mass executions of Jews by the Nazis, harrowing photographs from the camps, and images documenting the days of liberation. The photographs are captioned in four languages – Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and German – and the album includes four title pages in these languages. “We bring mankind back to a period of torment and destruction, when the skies were covered with heavy clouds of Hitler’s night, filled with cruelty. The vocabulary of man is insufficient to convey all the atrocities and horrors of the Hitlerite reality… While words are too pale and inadequate to commemorate the destruction of the Jews, the photographs – found by chance among the murderers of the SS – bear witness to their bestial crimes, before which shame and disgrace will forever cover the face of humanity” (from the publisher’s introduction).
Most of the photographs were taken by Nazi propaganda units (PK – Propagandakompanien) or by SS soldiers who photographed privately in the field, and were found in their possession after the war.
Album: 38 × 30 cm. 38 leaves. Very thick paper. Illustrated front wrapper lacking. Title pages in three languages – Yiddish title page lacking. Bound in a new, handsome binding with gilt stamping.
