Holocaust Memorial Museum Presents Unique Album

The rare images capture SS guards and Nazi officials relaxing and enjoying time off—hunting, singing, trimming Christmas trees, and more—all while Jews were being murdered at rates as fast as anytime during the Holocaust. The album was created and owned by Karl Höcker, an adjunct to camp Kommandant Richard Baer.

"It's hard to fathom the kind of people who ran these camps and one always struggles to understand who they were and how they saw themselves," says Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield. "These unique photographs vividly illustrate the contented world they enjoyed while overseeing a world of unimaginable suffering. They offer an important perspective on the psychology of those perpetrating genocide."

The 116 new images represent a significant increase in the number of known pre-liberation images of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Previously, only about 320 images existed of the camp before it was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945. (This figure does not include photographs of prisoners as they were processed into the camp for forced labor.)

The album complements the only other known collection of photographs taken at Auschwitz, published as the "Auschwitz Album" in 1980. Those images specifically depict the arrival of Hungarian Jews at the camp in late May 1944, and the selection process that the SS imposed on them. Some of the images contained in the new album were taken just days later. In contrast to documenting mass murder, they focus on the daily lives and recreational pursuits of Nazi officials, and no prisoner appears in any of the images.

Images in the new album include:

* Photographs of Dr. Josef Mengele in uniform on the camp grounds; some of the only known photographs of his tenure at Auschwitz-Birkenau

* A funeral for Nazi officers most likely killed in the accidental December 26, 1944, American bombing of the camp

* A sing-along featuring an accordion player and approximately 70 SS men, including Höcker; Dr. Josef Mengele; Birkenau Kommandant Josef Kramer; former Auschwitz Kommandant Rudolf Höss, who was brought back to oversee the murder of Hungarian Jews; and Otto Moll, the gas chamber supervisor at Auschwitz-Birkenau

* Höcker trimming Christmas trees in December 1944, weeks before the Red Army would overrun the camp

* Female SS auxiliaries eating blueberries and then mockingly crying and posing with empty bowls turned upside down when they are gone

* Numerous hunting trips and portraits of Höcker's favorite hunting dog

Remarkably, many of the album's pictures were taken when the camp's gas chambers and crematoria were operating at and above capacity as Hungarian Jews were arriving and being murdered.

"The Holocaust is recent history, and much more remains to be learned," says Teresa Swiebocka of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. "We know there are many more hidden collections like this. They need to be found and preserved to help transmit the memory of the Holocaust to future generations. Some of these new, unique images will enhance our new permanent exhibition." -- www.ushmm.org