Photographing the Holocaust – the ‘Auschwitz Album’

Dr Stefan Hördler, Director of the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial, will deliver a public lecture on the ‘Auschwitz Album’ – Wednesday 5 June at 6pm at the University of Huddersfield.

A COLLECTION of photographs known as the ‘Auschwitz Album’ is the only surviving photographic evidence of Jews arriving at Auschwitz and the horrific selection process they were forced to go through as they stepped down off the cattle wagons. But, why were they taken and who commissioned such an album in the first place?

These questions and more will be at the focus of a talk by Dr Stefan Hördler, Director of the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial, when he comes to deliver a public lecture on 5 June and will be held in association with the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre, based at the University of Huddersfield.

During his talk he will look at new research into the ‘Auschwitz Album’, demonstrating that it is above all an internal propaganda project that celebrates SS efficiency during the deportation of the Jews from Hungary.

He will also raise questions about how the album was commissioned, made and shared, and about the staging of a number of the images, reminding us that historians should examine photographic evidence just as critically as textual sources.

The ‘Auschwitz Album’ documents the arrival of thousands of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz after a three-day journey on cattle wagons and the process of selection and dehumanisation that followed.

The fact the album had been discovered at all was ‘luck’.

On the day of her liberation in the Mittelbau Dora concentration camp – hundreds of miles from Auschwitz – inmate Lili Jacob found a photo album in a bedside cabinet in the deserted SS barracks. It contained, among others, pictures of her family and friends as they arrived on the ramp and unknowingly awaited their death. It was a unique and invaluable tie to what once had been, could never return, and could never be rebuilt.

• Dr Stefan Hördler’s talk Photographing the Holocaust – The Auschwitz Album takes place on Wednesday 5 June at 6pm in the University’s Charles Sikes Building. Tickets are £8 (£6 concessions).

For more information visit https://www.hud.ac.uk/news/2019/may/stefan-hordler-leisel-carter-holocaust-centre/