Harsh photo of a Sonderkommando unit carrying bodies for incineration in Auschwitz – one of the four blurred photographs secretly taken in August 1944 inside the Auschwitz concentration camp by the jew camp inmate Alex (Alberto Israel Errera). It is the only known visual documentation in the vicinity of the gas chambers in which the final stage of the extermination process in the camp can be seen. Numbered and captioned on the reverse: “Sonderkommando Auschwitz August 1944,” the number 281 matches the number of the original photograph held at the Auschwitz Museum. This is apparently one of the early prints made from the original negative for research purposes.
The photograph before us is one of the four known images secretly taken in August 1944 by members of the Sonderkommando – units of Jewish prisoners forced to handle the bodies of those murdered in the gas chambers. It is the only known visual documentation (along with the three other photographs taken on the same day) in the vicinity of the gas chambers, in which the final stage of the extermination process in the camp can be seen, as prisoners drag the bodies of the victims for incineration. This photograph, along with the three others known, was taken at intervals of fifteen to thirty minutes by an Auschwitz-Birkenau inmate known as Alex, most commonly identified as Alberto Israel Errera, himself a member of the Sonderkommando. Two of the photographs were taken from inside the gas chamber (one of them being the image before us), and two were taken from outside. Because he was kneeling and slightly trembling while taking the photograph, the original image came out blurred. The film roll of the photographs was smuggled out by the Polish underground inside a tube of toothpaste to underground operative in Kraków, Teresa Łasocka-Estreicher (see below). The original photographs were numbered by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum as numbers 280–283.
The photographer Alex (Alberto Israel Errera) was a naval captain in the Greek Navy and a Jewish partisan of Greek origin. His code name was Alkos Alexandridis. Other inmates of the Sonderkommando from Crematorium 5 who took part in the event included Alter Feinsilber (also known as Stanisław Jankowski), brothers Yossel and Shlomo Dragon, and Dawid Szmulewski. They were the ones who helped acquire and hide the camera and kept watch during the photographing to ensure that the SS guard was not looking in the direction of the photographer. One of those present during the secret photographing, Alter Feinsilber, testified after the war: “On the day the photographs were taken, I don’t remember the exact day or month, we assigned tasks. Some of us kept watch over the person taking the photographs. In other words, we were there to observe the approach of anyone who didn’t know the secret, especially SS men patrolling the area. Finally, the moment came. We gathered at the western entrance leading from the gas chamber to Crematorium 5: we saw no SS guard observing from the watchtower over the door through the barbed wire, nor near the place where the photographs were taken. Alex, a Greek Jew, quickly took out his camera, pointed it in the direction of the burning pile of corpses, and pressed the shutter. That’s why the prisoner photographed Sonderkommando inmates working at the pile. An SS man was standing next to them, but his back was turned toward the crematorium. Another photo was taken from the other side of the building, in the area where men and women undressed near the trees. They were from a transport destined for the gas chamber of Crematorium 5.”
Feinsilberg was positioned on the roof of the crematorium, keeping watch while Alex took the photographs. In the comprehensive 1987 study on the gas chambers at the Auschwitz extermination camp by Jean-Claude Pressac, Feinsilberg testified that the photographs were taken at intervals of fifteen to thirty minutes, through the black frame of either a door or a window (most likely the door) of the gas chamber. The film roll was smuggled out of the camp by the Polish underground, hidden inside a toothpaste tube by Helena Dantón, who worked in the SS cafeteria. Attached to the film was a note bearing the date September 4, 1944, signed “Stakło” – the alias of Auschwitz inmate Stanisław Kłodziński of the Polish resistance. The note was intended for “Tel, ” the code name of Teresa Łasocka-Estreicher, a resistance operative in Kraków, and it read: “Urgent. Send two rolls of 6×9 camera film as quickly as possible. There is an opportunity to take photographs. We are sending you pictures from Birkenau – gas poisoning operation. In these photographs one can see one of the sites where bodies were burned when the crematoria were not capable of burning them all. The corpses in the foreground are awaiting to be thrown into the fire. Another picture shows one of the areas in the forest where people undressed before ‘taking a shower’ – as they were told – and then went to the gas chambers. Send camera film as fast as you can! Send the attached photos to Tel – we think you should send the enlargements later.”
At the Auschwitz Museum, these photographs are described as one of the most daring acts of resistance carried out by the Sonderkommando prisoners.
The three additional photographs and further details – see here and see also here .
10×7 cm. Very good condition.
