אונדזער חורבן אין בילד – Our Destruction in Pictures – An Album of Harrowing Photos Documenting the Holocaust of European Jewry, Edited by Raphael Olewski, 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. Original Colored Cover with an Illustration of a Mother and Child Pierced by a Swastika Knife with Rivers of Blood Against the Background of a Concentration Camp Fence (Designed by Y. Gafosteck).
The album contains 115 black-and-white photos printed on thick paper, some of which are extremely harsh photos, documenting the Holocaust of European Jewry from the rise of the Third Reich to the liberation of the death camps. The photos include harrowing images from within the ghettos in Poland, the Aktionen and selections, the expulsion of Jews from their homes, and the confiscation of their property, hunger in the ghetto, the Jewish police in the ghetto, Nazi abuse of Jews, deportations to death camps, mass executions of Jews by the Nazis, distressing photos from the camps, and photos documenting the days of liberation. The captions in the album are in four languages—Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and German. The album also includes four title pages in four languages. “We return humanity to a period of suffering and destruction when the skies were covered by the heavy clouds of Hitler’s night, full of cruelty. The vocabulary of humanity cannot fully convey the horror and terror of the Hitlerian reality… While words are pale and inadequate to memorialize Jewish destruction, the photos found accidentally with the murderers of the S.S. are testimony to their bestial murders, a testimony before which the face of humanity will forever be covered in shame and disgrace” (from the publisher’s introduction).
Most of the photos were taken by the Nazi Propaganda Companies (PK – Propagandakompanien) or by SS soldiers who privately photographed the scenes and were found with them after the war.
Album: 38×30 cm. 38 leaves. Extra-thick paper. Original illustrated cover. Continuous damage with a slight defect at the top of the last three leaves. General condition good.
