New exhibition reveals power of photographs captured in Holocaust
Print Edition
STARING at grainy video footage of Jewish children marching to their freedom though the barbed-wire fences of the Auschwitz death camp, 79-year-old Vera Kriegel Grossman excitedly points a finger at the screen upon identifying a dark-haired girl in a dirty striped uniform as her 6-year-old self.
“I can’t believe it happened to me,” she said. “I wasn’t a child there. I was grown up. It was like I was 100 years old.”
Archival footage shot by Auschwitz’s Soviet liberators is part of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial’s latest exhibition, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, exploring the power of photography during World War II. The 1,500 photographs and 13 films displayed come from various perspectives, victims and perpetrators alike, and look to offer today’s media-saturated visitors a new angle on the horrors.
Photography has come to shape our memory of the Holocaust. The “Flashes of Memory” exhibit offers a glimpse behind the lens, showing the cameras used, the photographers and their motivations.
Daniel Uziel, its historical adviser, said: “We are asking the visitor to look beyond the image and examine the wider historical perspective.”
It includes Nazi-produced material that was part of their vast propaganda machine aimed at both enhancing their powerful image and portraying the Jew as a decrepit, disease-infested yet sinister creature that was worthy of extermination.
Besides serving as future evidence to try Nazi criminals, these were also aimed at reeducating the postwar German population and for domestic American consumption to legitimize the huge cost and sacrifice of joining the war.
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