Archive for February 11th, 2017
Laughing at Auschwitz – in 1944
SS auxiliaries poses at a resort for Auschwitz personnel
The photos were taken between May and December 1944, and they show the officers and guards of the Auschwitz relaxing and enjoying themselves — as countless people were being murdered and cremated at the nearby death camp.
In some of the photos, SS officers can be seen singing. In others they are hunting and in another a man can be seen decorating a Christmas tree in what could only be described as a holiday in hell.
The album also contains eight photos of Josef Mengele — some of the very few existing snapshots taken of the concentration camp’s notorious doctor during the time he spent there.
The photos were made public by the United States National Holocaust Museum in Washington. The museum obtained the photos from a retired US Army intelligence officer, who came across the album in an apartment in Frankfurt and has now given them to the museum.
“These unique photographs vividly illustrate the contented world they enjoyed while overseeing a world of unimaginable suffering,” museum director Sara Bloomfield said in a statement.
“They offer an important perspective on the psychology of those perpetrating genocide.” The director of the museum’s photographic reference collection, Judith Cohen, said there are no photos depicting anything abhorrent, “and that’s precisely what makes them so horrible.”
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Adonis Diaries 