On December 8th. 1941, in a letter to Mendel Grossman:
“..I inform you herewith that you are not allowed to work in your profession for private purposes. Your photographic work is confined only to ..activity in ..department in which you are employed. You are therefore strictly prohibited to do any photographic work.” Chaim Rumkowski.
Over all the years I have been writing on The Holocaust, researching its Catastrophe and learning of its Atrocity, it is the imagery in testimony that strikes us. Of course, there is an inevitable collision between those images presented, which see life at its fullest and the stages leading toward, during and after the Catastrophe. Photographs are presented that become as testified to by those who witnessed the atrocity or indeed, where consumed by it. There is no vindication of the disparity between the two, though a reposited victory is reserved for those Jews who beat all attempts to destroy them. As the photographs of Henryk Ross present us with a Memory Unearthed of The Lodz Ghetto, we recognise in that Ghetto, which is steeped in the same atrocity that awaits the Jews of every other created and functional Ghetto, the loss to come.
“..This Book is dedicated to ..Children whose lives ended during The Holocaust and to ..photographers ..known and unknown ..who risked their lives to record their story.” Chana Byers Abells.
Here too, at the Death Camp Chelmno, and within those other Death Camps, Lodz Ghetto Jews are extolled to calm as they are driven toward eternity. When we add to these impressions the very narrative of what Yitzhak Arad surely knew, what we then know of what is finally recalled, we are fully gripped by what in fact has been saved of the past. All of this is secured within centres such as Yad Vashem for future generations of nations to know how cruelty can permeate our own existence. With The Pictorial History of The Holocaust there exists, and because 6,000,000 Jews within Europe were forced to comply and die, a repository of that loss reigns throughout these terrortories. As starvation too played its hand in delivering to the eventual resolve of the Hitler acolytes for The Final Solution of The Jewish Question, mages of starving Jews are presented in grave numbers. When Roman Vishniac sought To Give Them Light, and here his words lead us to images which deliver back a People, though in still form, they are representative of a Jewish life that has gone, that has been taken away.
“..Jews were worried but did not dare to think ..disaster was close.” Roman Vishniac.
An immense thank you must go to those who risked both life and limb to record their story. Due to their effort and courage we have a portfolio of such imagery, now ingrained upon our psyche, we can never let go of what that impression is that has been created. Roman Vishniac is recording for us here, impressions created for those Jews of Bratislava who in 1938 could not contemplate what was coming. The Jewish People, who could never believe that such a disaster was approaching were moved to foresee such a prospect, moments before their own destruction. For us to attempt to imagine the worst, is for us to suspect a graver evil in mankind than has ever been contemplated. The entire extirpation of the whole of the Jewish People had not been written into Pogroms as yet devised. Our misfortune is to now realise that the Jews themselves were betrayed by their very belief in the decency within humanity. That humanity within society further realised that the society they belonged now remained uncivilised in the extreme
“..photographs. ..depict ..degradation ..oppression ..Jewish People suffered under ..Nazis ..before being exterminated en masse. For we ..spared The Holocaust ..know there is nothing normal on display. We know ..outcome.” Edgar M. Bronfman.
We come to recognise that this is just the impression which photographic images present to us as we survey the record a suffering for the Jewish People exterminated in extremis. Visually it is a vision of a past, not knowing yet what is about to assail those we seek to reclaim from a searing and brutal atrocity readily recorded. The warmth of such imagery however, the impression created which belies the outcome, is a horror beyond belief captioned in moments of sublime innocence. While I recognise too, that in these images, these are Your People, and though I often relate that they have become, as much my adopted People over the years, I cannot take away their place in our History is because they, as The Chosen People were instead chosen for complete annihilation.
“..Auschwitz ..world’s largest cemetery ..without a single grave. I held tight to 3 dreams. ..first living through ..nightmare ..surviving ..camp. ..second was to tell ..even though it ..cannot be explained. There was no reason whatsoever for what was done. ..I knew I had to tell ..to as many people as possible. ..third was that ..if I managed to accomplish ..first two ..I would do anything and everything to bring about ..establishment of State of Israel. ..I realized all three dreams.” Noah Klieger.
Through the processing assimilation of concern for these Jews, with an anger at The Holocaust’s commissioning, and as an accusation that allowed for it all to happen, I share a rage that 6,000,000 Jews cannot express. Then, when we marry the image to the terrifying detail of the witness evidence, we have an unbearable depiction of an incomprehensible and indefensible inhumanity. This human but Jewish catastrophe, a horror never before realised in all of history, is exacted before a watching World and in a time of a festival of the renaissance of culture with its civilising influences and human appreciation.
“..Scream from every sand dune ..from under every stone. ..dust ..fire ..smoke. It is your blood ..your sap ….marrow of your bones ..your flesh..” Yitzhak Katzenelson.
However, with the images presented of what was done against these 6,000,000 Jews of Europe, these must stand alongside the imagery of what has been lost. What was taken away and to such a cruel notion that civilised humanity had existed, must be more truthfully annotated. The essential in all of this is the preservation of all that had so far persevered for the Jewish People, faith in their belief system and even faith in us. For all that was conducted against them as The Jewish People, we have to look at the moral abandonment of anything we would now refer to as moral turpitude. It is apparent that with these images of what was lost, they stand in bold relief against the very detailed and defining imagery of what horror and terror was inflicted upon them as Jews. Tragically, the inevitable cost, in terms of the Catastrophe that is The Holocaust, cannot identify all those Jews who were either pictured before or during the rage conducted against them. This then is the tenure of The Holocaust which must deal in all aspects of a grave wrong, conducted by and for a hatred no civilised humanity should identify itself with. It is a hatred long conducted and then, by stealth, fully settled the Jews outside recognised boundaries, within structured Ghetto and eventually confined permanently to Grave Sites made up of Death Camps and Killing Sites.
“..Nazis used photography as part of a sophisticated arsenal of media propaganda to control and intimidate German public opinion. ..camera was a weapon.” Sybil Milton.
We have all of these images, and as they are presented to us, even by Willy Georg, but more appropriately by those like Mendel Grossman, Serge Klarsfeld, Henryk Ross and Roman Vishniac we are gazing at a loss that is indescribable. Of course there are many photographs by the Nazi’s themselves, under orders not to do so, and some commanded to, we have a library of some 250,000 of their images to compliment their own atrocity. Mendel Grossman would leave us a repository of Jewish Life, not killed nor deadened by Hitler’s effort to eradicate every single trace of every Jew that lived in Europe at the time. That too is true of Serge Klarsfeld whose very herculean endeavour has secured more images of the Jews Children, particularly of French Jewry than Hitler would have ever expected.
“..Stories ..legends ..dredged up from ..dreadful past ..pogroms ..burnings ..expulsions ..whole Jewish communities massacred. ..tragedies seemed to cling to ..houses and squares.” Roman Vishniac.
Then there are the collections at Yad Vashem, which seeks To Bear Witness to the Calamity that unfolds within its Memorial and the pages of those Albums and Books it lends to us. With all of this resource we are then delivered from the very Streets of Jewish persistence right to the very ramparts of their Destruction. This is all played out in an imagery unwarranted by or for any civilising humanity that pertains to have humanity in its heart. Also, and while there are also these centres in America which all add to an imagery that must never be looked upon without concern, we wonder most fervently why such a need was not present for what is now missing back then. The representation of those failed Jews, whose lives appear intact, are in fact a stolen premise before oblivion. Here, United States Holocaust Museum and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, all bear a form of witnessing which all adds to the greater need to recall. What we choose to remember is that 6,000,000 Jews require of us a voice, to echo to an image of the impression of what they can no longer deliver. There can be no image I have not seen that does not leave me without a need to write in such deep despair as to what was allowed to happen.
“..Wherever we went ..failure would be certain ..victory ..there could only be one victory ..to hold out as long as possible.” Noemi Szac-Wainkranc.
Though Noemi speaks here of the Jews of The Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, she could be speaking of anywhere where Jews sought to cling to life. I cannot look at the imagery of the atrocity without the realisation that what such words add to what the photographers too have presented. To pave the way toward what is unacceptable, and the wastage of all human life, the Jews of Europe conceded, there was no way out from the failure that would be certain. Also, and while such images are cascading through such atrocity, we are adorned with the vibrancy of all Jewish existence. This all leads us forlornly toward the escalating trepidation soon to greet all Jews then facing their final peril, Life’s extinguishing solution. What we know from The Auschwitz Album, from the images Roman Vishniac presents to us, from Willy Georg’s detail also, is the extermination of that very existence these Jews are as yet unaware of. Here, for the Jews of Hungary at least, they have been far enough away from the inferno not to feel its heat.
“..Until then I had known Germans only as a steel wall of implacable death. I had come to contend with them as a free person with memories from reality ..created then by their countrymen. To bring right up in front of their eyes ..image of these experiences so that they ..their children ..their grandchildren might taste them for a moment. But I was faced with ordinary people ..shaken ..moved ..terrified ..shamed. Thus was I required. With shared tears.” Halina Birenbaum.
Within this particular album however, we are at the end of the line as never before seen, witnessed or conducted in such a race against time. The victory of the Allied powers is almost upon us and at the gates to Auschwitz, the palpable sense that the end to Jewish torment might be closer by. Here though, Hitler sees only the final goal, the further elimination of even more Jews, and this time it is to be all of Hungarian Jewry, or at least 80% of them. This imagery too can be mirrored across the Death Camp system, and as it is presented by Roman Vishniac’s images, we are aware of what is at stake. For those Jews of Poland ostensibly, and Europe in particular, far too many who have no idea of the meaning of Chelmno, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor or Treblinka, let alone Auschwitz nor Birkenau, we look back in angered frustration as to what will befall them in such massively huge, abhorrent numbers.
“..Passages from Diaries return words to a People who can never be silenced.” Rafael F. Scharf.
What we consider, and whether the Diary comes from those who left an indelible mark upon The Holocaust, because they did not Survive, or from those Jews who did in fact survive, we are the ones gifted with the lessons still to learn. To then allow for their oratory to add to what we are presented with, there are images from all these Books which contain the commentary of lost lives so as to provoke our attention. Along with that resolve to have emerged from Lodz, Lublin, Galicia, Hungary or Poland, the Jewish lives are now a vision in the main, which are to be extorted from living. Whether that is in any one of the 6 Death Camps, other Camps, Ghettos and the myriad of Killing Sites, their testimony is highlighted also in photographic evidences. We are thus struck by the images from The Auschwitz Album knowing full well, these are the Jews of Hungary at the end of their journey toward annihilation.
“..power ..of historical reconstruction ..sombre immediacy ..we are taken inside ..realities of life and death which led to ..most significant act of Jewish resistance during The Holocaust.” Eva Hoffman.
Any or many of these photographs, even those providing the images of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, are clearly known to us. Much of that imagery then has become recognisable and are of those Jews those both presented to Treblinka and those which have presented Hitler with a detail in true bravery. What we also have, in some of Vishniac’s effort, are many of these same Jews prior to their transportation toward the resettlement murder awaiting them. For much of Polish Jewry, and we speak mostly of these, as they are more than 3,000,000 destroyed, Mendel Grossman shares his images too of what is lost. Roman Vishniac also shares a passing of Lodz Jews, alongside the very evidences of which stains our memory. Tragically, and with such losses that we are eternally competing over, in terms of that which was expelled from all existence, we look with huge emotion at what inevitably becomes our human loss. Though I speak of our loss, it is of mainly Jews that I speak for as 6,000,000 deserve better from those of us, non-Jews, who did not speak loudly enough for them, back then.
“..What kinds of beasts of burden were these Jews of ..Carpathians.” Roman Vishniac.
It becomes apparent that these beasts of burden, the Jews of the Carpathian Ruthenia Region, were foresters. Here too we can enjoin with the imagery of Grossman, Vishniac delivering ordinary lives and recognise that this is a photographic reservoir of immense importance. Memory is the essential of that imagery we must hold onto as we realise, this is a testimony to all that is lost. While we do not have all the names and personages of the 6,000,000 Jews that have been detained within The Holocaust, we recognise their loss. We must search ever wider and far deeper for what can ensure more of what is lost that can still be retained. Roman Vishniac brought us through that trauma of Jewish life, prior to its extinction for us to welcome their presence. He leads us toward much of where Jews were formerly vibrant and productive to where they were almost nearly obliterated, as a whole and almost totally. Alongside Roman Vishniac, whose photographic evidences include Lodz, we see the Jews from the former Hungarian province of Carpatho-Ruthenia, these same Jews who fed the furnaces of Birkenau, who look straight back at us unknowingly and while we still to ask the question as to Why, the repository of images has no answer.
“..camera captured anonymous human beings ..but we made every possible effort to identify them ..to give them back their names ..their individual uniqueness ..their personal essence.” Avner Shalev.
What I have always sought, in those words I have so often used, is to enable History to give back to a vanquished Jewish presence. Here, and if not their names can be fully presented, the very essence of their being is recorded for knowledge to be made aware. In this particular insight alone, The Auschwitz Album, where we are given a glimpse of the intended anonymous imagery of these Hungarian Jews enroute to extinction, their anonymity is being whittled away at to present us a fuller knowledge of who they are. As fortune would have it, Lili Jacob found the photographs which provide all of History, not just the progress toward Hungarian Jewish destruction, but the physical presentation of individual uniqueness of the Jewish Person as is being recognised, named and forever recalled. Tragically, not all the images provide the necessary names for memory, but we now recognise some whose anonymity has now been given an identity. The certain aim from within The Holocaust, is for The Final Solution of The Jewish Question was to obliterate all Jewish presence and then the evidences of that presence.
“..From ..mountains to ..Tisza River ..lumber industry used Jews as woodcutters ..log carriers ..raftsmen. ..tools ..as primitive as their arguments were refined.” Roman Vishniac.
Whether we are with Roman Vishniac in the region of Carpathia, or in the Ghetto of Lodz, where we see the Children, the comparisons are a Jewish one in all we see. For those Jews we see, who travel along local Streets, and where Synagogues still stand, this is merely an impression of what presents us of what once existed. As we look deep into the area of Baluty, Pabianice, recognising all that is gone as they and it was torn viciously from us, the journey from here is reflective of what Auschwitz will present to them all. Toward the end of the War, and into Hungary, we move relentlessly toward a realisation that is callous in the extreme. Hitler has not as yet destroyed all the largest Centres of European Jewish Cultural existence, nor the Jews who reside within them. However, that inevitable confrontation, a colossal tragedy that was to be rectified in brutal fashion, and speedily, takes place in 1944 as the realisation has been secure that Hitler, his Reich and those who adorn it, as a spent force. Here though, and prior to ever more Jewish lives that are to be destroyed, the Hungarian Slaughter is to be organised as Hitler’s decreasing influence is forever waning and the speeding up of Allied victory is evidenced.
“..Mukachevo ..all that vanished with ..destruction of ..Shtetl.” Roman Vishniac.
These Jews of Mukachevo, Carpathia, Ruthenia and Hungary are now within sight of an expending reach of the Third Reich. However, all of this meets with that final push toward that of Hitler’s ultimate and final resolve for the Jews of Europe, ahead of the more glaring need of the German people or the German nation, a War effort. From May 15th. 1944 until July 9th. 1944, and the imagery gained of Hungarian Jewry, is being decimated. Here, and over a 55 day period, Hungarian Jews on some 147 Transports, representing a total of 3,419 Jewish People averaging each transport, reach Birkenau. What eventually totalled some 502,491 Hungarian Jews, all of whom were transported and delivered to Birkenau for Destruction, we have the imagery of prior existence, a Jewish persistence, where once there was Jewish life, all of this rocks us to our human core. As the Mukachevo, the capitol of Carpatho-Ruthenia comes into view, we recognise that some 14,000 Jews who lived in City are a part of that final and terrifying aim. More than 100,000 Jews from the whole region were consumed within Birkenau n these latter day transports. Here, and mostly in Eichmann’s last managed drive against Hungarian Jewry, the dissipation of what had been Jewish existence, was no longer.
“..People caught in these photographs ..busy ..feverish ..emaciated ..oppressed ..but still living a life of sorts ..are unaware of ..unthinkably cruel end that awaits them shortly. Virtually none will escape a horrible death.” Rafael F. Scharf.
What Roman Vishniac and Lili Jacobs bring together, what Yad Vashem holds on to preserve and what all such albums possess is that line of communicating that is an evil for the Jews. For the vast majority of the Jews therefore, unknowing of what is to come and Hungarian Jews who are seen immediately before they too are destroyed, who should suspect such evil. While Roman Vishniac’s effort moves us relentlessly to where The Auschwitz Album, thanks to Lili Jacobs, brings us to a step just outside the Gassing Chambers at Birkenau, we have images interposed which take us all the way back to 2,000 years of Jewish life in Europe. This Auschwitz Album alone, which is an Historical record on its own, is confirming of the progress of Hungarian Jewry toward extermination. While this is of such imagery as would deliver further knowledge of the processes toward destruction, in the very detail of an atrocity which impacted most deadly upon 6,000,000 Jews, we are denied the much more virulent evidences. I can show you every image that is to come out of the period leading up to and during and eventual progression toward The Holocaust.
“..They are standing on ..ramp ..Women young and old ..with frightened Children and Infants clinging to them on all sides. Next to them are ..Men young and old. They are about to undergo a selection process that will send them to a horrific death within hours.” Avner Shalev.
I can make you more aware of the brutality and horrifying detail that you are already aware of, though remaining as incomprehensible to it as I am. We have perhaps become inured by the spectacle of the human form being brutalised and even being shot while visioning the images of a passive state of affairs for the Jewish People at home, at leisure, in business or simply parading through life as they should have been allowed to. What the German soldier Willy Georg presents to us, with his photographs In The Warsaw Ghetto is an insight into the horror to come. This is an almost voyeuristic entry point to the pre-apocalyptic slaughter. As we visit what we think we might know of Cracow, Lodz, Lublin, Mukachevo and particularly Warsaw, Roman Vishniac informs us further of what Poland, Europe, the World of all that we have lost. There is not too much we can owe to a German soldier whose role in the occupation of Warsaw and indeed all of Poland, but Warsaw led Polish Jewry inextricably toward Treblinka. Here, Willy Georg lends us the images of a day in passing, when the Jews of that capitol of Polish Jewry, Warsaw was still at odds with the images to emerge.
“..carriers of heavy loads. ..on their backs roughly hewn crates filled with merchandise. They pushed handcarts and pulled carriages meant for horses.” Roman Vishniac.
The Jews of All of Poland, though languishing in a hatred for their persistence within a land they had been national to for nearly 2,000 years, were still living a heightened life, even a form of peace from the relentless hatred to soon present itself. What with the Nazi occupation easing these Jewish People toward a horrible death, we have their visual, episodic and written testimony clearly etched into an imagery now of soon to be extinct lives. Here, and surrounded by the very Jews set for annihilation, Willy Georg captured the images we see of a disappeared Jewish People. Though targeted and confined, so as to be starved to death, these Jewish People in the Warsaw Ghetto set the standard by which Jewish Ghetto life would be measured in a life over death struggle played out in pits, ditches, Ghetto, Labour and Concentration Camps and then the embodiment of mechanised and industrialised Slaughter, the Death Camps in Poland.
“..camera grasps a moment when there were 100’s of 1,000’s of Jews still living in ..Ghetto of Warsaw ..and regardless of ..horrors of every day life there ..conditions retained a semblance of normalcy. ..moving images capture ….seemingly innocent beginnings of The Holocaust.” Dr. Lucjan Dobroszycki.
Also, we are now aware that many of these exact same Jews, who Survived the impenetrable hunger that was forced upon them, are then transported off to be gassed to death in a most lethal form. From the Umschlagplatz of Warsaw, transports of trains which led directly toward Malkinia Station, where the Warsaw Jews are detrained, and from there it is but a short distance to where Treblinka and extermination awaited them. Here, while we are being urged to accept that some 900,000 Jews of Warsaw and from all of Poland are confined, there are possibly as many as 1,500,000 Polish and other Jews Slaughtered at Treblinka. Of course we are equally aware that non-Jews occupy each and every possible site to convenience the Nazi killers, but none share the intentional detail that has been fixed by The Final Solution of The Jewish Question.
“..Slonimer were eager to tell me what their grandfathers had told them about him. ..Shtetl kept ..names of its ..constituents alive ..remembering them ..for generations.” Roman Vishniac.
What Roman Vishniac listened to in Slonim, what history has been allowed to listen to wherever Jewish Culture reigned, were reminiscences over his Grandfather Wolf, a Writer, Philosopher and Banker. Whether we glimpse the image of a Jew we might never know, we know their humanity that had existed before it had been torn from every anchor that had rooted them. Whether that settling had been in Cracow, Galicia, Hungary, Kiev, Lodz, Mukachevo or Slonim, Vilna, Warsaw, The Baltic States or in fact from the rest of Europe, their imminent demise was easily preventable on some limited or more urgently, a grander scale. While I see within the normalcy of these images, there is a horrifying realisation that they all perhaps no longer exist and I and we happen to know fully of their fate. It is a troubling reality for me, that even as I crossed the threshold of the 6 Death Camps, and while I sensed I knew those who had preceded me, I would at least emerge.
“..Before she died ..my Mother left a note asking my Sister and me to remember ..yarzheitsof our Family. She listed ..dates and explained ..My Family has no tombstone. I am their tombstone.” Ann Weiss.
That reality was as true at Belzec as it is for Ann Weiss and the memory of her Mother, who is a tombstone to a Family denied such a luxury at a burial site that does not recall them. Outside each of the gates to the Death Camps, I heard myself repeat each time, almost as a mantra to these Jews who had gone before me, never to re-emerge, I was preparing myself, knowing I would come back out through each of these gates. What we might not see, and in abundance of the Jews taken from us, is the lives of those Jews of Europe now resting before the calamity that is Adolf Hitler. History pours scorn upon their existence and rips apart their very lives amongst us by having failed these Jews in life and after Justice has clearly failed all 6,000,000 of them. It is indeed terrifying to me that I can look to what has been gathered in such imagery, and that collectively assembled imagery within Yitzhak Arad’s, The Pictorial History of The Holocaust, shares both the imagery and its consequential reality, which so confronts us.
“..last time I was in Cracow ..winter 1938. I stood in ..falling snow ..old legends and tales descending. ..An old scholar passed by ..looking like a patriarch in biblical times. He appeared tired. I ..asked ..how long he had walked. ..Since ..beginning. I dis not ask what he meant.” Roman Vishniac.
Clearly Roman is presented with 6,000 years of imagery, an impression we can still barely create as it became lost to us and is now pressed into oblivion. I am reminded here too of my own walk in the Belzec snow as I trawled memory to add it to a recollection of all too many Jews who are detained within its confines. These images though, of a natural Jewish World being played out while the tenets of an extreme hatred is being realised against them, is heart rending. In such a cataclysmic ordination of atrocity, which is as abhorrent a reminder of what is to come as it is to what has been lost, we look at all these images with renewed emphasis. What has disappeared, and is no longer, is a Jewish existence that was made no longer viable in the presence of such a hatred to consume them. All that has been stolen from all of us, certainly for the many of us who wish to know who these Jewish People are, has a representation that is testified to in the images we can add these words to.
“..eyes of 2,500 Children gaze at us from across ..years in these pages. They are among ..more than 11,400 Children whose lives are chronicled here ..innocent Children who were taken from their homes all over France to be deported and put to death in ..Nazi Camps.” Serge Klarsfeld.
For me, the images of the Children pose a greater threat to us all, as the Children are the most defenceless of our own humanity. It is more inconceivable that any civilised nation could so abuse, consume and Slaughter innocent Children in the name of hatred, and it is simply because they are Children. What ensures that we are more sickened at the concept of murdering Children, let alone the enactment we are to become witnesses to, impoverishes all sense of civilised society. What Serge Klarsfeld has managed to collect together, in images of the Children and many of Their Families in the worthy tome; French Children of The Holocaust, is a memory so near exhaustive, we look more impressionable upon what is lost here. These Jewish Children, catapulted into an abyss of atrocity, who are no longer allowed to live up to their own expectations and promise, assail us with an accusation tat is indefensible. So we now manicure a position for the Jewish Child who is fully installed within the terms of The Holocaust. They are taken away from so many Jewish Centres of excellence, both Historical and Religious, and are the disappeared.
“..Vilna ..labyrinth of passages and intersections. ..centre of all Jewish life ..great Synagogue ..its shulhoyf ..courtyard. ..Vilner Gaon held court 200 years ago.” Roman Vishniac.
The centre of both belief and study, Vilna was an exceptional place of Jewish antiquity that was however so violently shook, all the while that antecedence of great learning was being ripped from its founding and shaken to its core. As such, all Jewish study and belief remains as it was brought out of the darkness to allow us to know the truth of what is missing. Though devalued by extermination, these Centres that have been consumed while its lively heritage rose to a nation that bore fruit. Along with its Jewish presence, the rich civilising influence that has been removed, and almost entirely from many parts of Europe, has created a vacuum of pre-existence. Where Jewish eminence within Vilna once was, now ground to dust in Ponary, imagery replaces much of what is lost.
“..I buried my negatives in ..ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy. I was anticipating ..total destruction of Polish Jewry. I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom.” Henryk Ross.
Aligned to testimony, such evidence lends us the impression of persistence that had led the Jewish People here to Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania, some 600 years previously. Together with these resurrected negatives, so as to ensure memory can be bolstered, adds a steady supply to us. What is now certain, with images of so many more, including the Children who are equally of the disappeared, is a broader repository. I perhaps add more emphasis to the Child so as to leave, if not a hint of their passing, certainly an echo of who they are and what we owe to their memory. It is monumentally clear that the Jewish People have fashioned many aspects of what is classed as civilisation. Here though, and during the period of what is to emerge into The Holocaust, theirs is a positivity which eventually would crush them to death in the annihilation factories and pits of extermination.
“..In ..cases we have undertaken ..our goal has always been ..to institute legal proceedings ..and ..contribute to history by assembling and publishing an accurate documentary record.” Beate & Serge Klarsfeld.
Such then were these death dealing facility’s, that the device of destruction was an eradication process so formally developed, it was mechanised and machined to deadly perfection. Along with the usage of bullets, designed to rip apart bodies, all was sought to consign the Jewish People toward an ignominious ending that Hitler had clearly sought. Once the design for mass destruction had been devised, the Jews of Europe, left to starve to death in Ghettos constructed to confine them, faded into an oblivion that would not remain. These temporarily assigned holding areas where they were housed into non-existence, enveloped the Jews into a feeling of security. What we must recognise, in any element of the overall atrocity, is the meaning of loss that the imagery now seeks to place over the certain destruction. It is apparent that the photographic images do not fully allow for the recognition of all those Jewish People that have been consumed. However, the extent to which I have sourced volumes on the imagery to emerge from The Holocaust is as exhaustive as it is a searing stain upon the back of humanity, that shows us the loss.
“..Yad Vashem ..tells ..tragedy of ..planned extermination of ..Jewish People ..an act nearly carried out to completion. ..Surviving remnant who lived ..experience ..moment of liberation began their return to ..land of ..living in a process of personal and national rehabilitation ..overshadowed by interminable memories and nightmares.” Bella Gutterman & Avner Shalev.
The very numbers of those 6,000,000 Jews, for whom I wish to do Justice to their memory, has not fully emerged. History will never ever retrieve anything like 6,000,000 records of their passing and no 6,000,000 individual details of who they were will ever confront us. Nor even is there any where near the 6,000,000 images necessary of those Jewish People who are permanently lost to us all. All that has been swept aside to allow the flood of hatred to sweep across a Continent of people, so as to subsume anything approaching civilised humanity, destroyed far too much of Jewish Community. The route back is to be forever written in the abject failure in firstly, failing to prevent the atrocity and then denying any form of Justice necessary to absolve our human, moral and ethical guilt. Se here we end a passage which does no more for resurrecting a further name necessary in order to deliver toward the 6,000,000 losses, but we add more to the loss by knowing we all have lost.
“..The Holocaust ..Shoah in Hebrew ..most tragic era in ..history of ..Jewish People ..1933 ..1945 ..when ..Germans and their collaborators perpetrated genocide against them. By ..end of Second World War ..Nazis and their minions had managed to put ..6,000,000 Jews to death and destroy 1,000’s of Jewish communities. Cultural and material assets built with great labour and care over centuries ..were burned and destroyed. ..pictorial history of ..Shoah. ..photographs depict ..humiliation ..abuse ..suffering ..death ..lot of Jews in ..territories under ..rule of Nazi Germany and its allies in occupied Europe.” Yitzhak Arad.
Chana Byers Abells. The Children We Remember.
Yitzhak Arad. The Pictorial History of The Holocaust.
Willy Georg. In The Warsaw Ghetto.
Bella Gutterman. To Bear Witness.
Lili Jacob. The Auschwitz Album.
Serge Klarsfeld. The Children of Izieu.
Serge Klarsfeld. French Children of The Holocaust.
Henryk Ross. Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto.
Roman Vishniac. To Give Them Light.
Ann Weiss. The Last Album.
