NAZI HEL - a rare and horrifying photo album from the death camps (not censored). Published by Van Holkema & Warendorf N.V. Amsterdam, [1945] - first edition. Dutch.
An album of 28 large, harsh photographs taken in the death camps by Allied photographer Willem Van De Pol during the liberation of the camps. In the introduction to the album, the publisher writes (Dutch) : "This booklet brings together various official photographs of Allied war photographers, which together constitute a shocking record of all those places that the cultural themes of the Third German Reich, as they called themselves, turned into hell on earth... These pictures, one by one, explain the struggle of life and death of an entire world against life... Allied soldiers met in the camps the bodies of Jews whose only crime was that they were born Jewish...". The introduction goes on to explain the camps of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, and others - the situation in which the Allies found each camp, the number of those who perished in it, and the number of survivors found alive in each camp.
In the photographs: a group of female survivors in Bergen-Belsen in a severe physical condition, bodies being removed from a crematorium in Mauthausen, starving children in Bergen-Belsen, emaciated prisoners lying on the ground in Buchenwald, prisoners suffering from malnutrition in Stalag, exhausted prisoners in Bergen-Belsen, a hungry child revealing his life during liberation, the crematorium in Majdanek, a mass grave in Bergen-Belsen "Himmlers Hell", bodies piled on the ground in Dachau, women being liberated in Bergen-Belsen, German civilians forced to visit camps and witness the crimes of their people in Buchenwald, commander of Bergen-Belsen Joseph Kramer arrested by Allied soldiers, children being released for freedom in Buchenwald, and more.
During World War II, Dutch photojournalist Willem van de Poll [1895-1970] documented the Warsaw Ghetto and the Sudetenland region in his photographs. At the end of the war, he captured the liberation of various Dutch cities and death camps. After the war, he was appointed as the official photographer for the Dutch royal family. Between 1948 and 1949, during the War of Independence, he visited Israel and documented civilian life during the war. He continued to photograph important events in Israel in the following years, leaving behind thousands of photographs.
Album: 25x19 cm. Each photograph on a full page. The photographs are all described in Dutch. Hard original cardboard cover. Condition good - very good.
