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May 5, 2005
Yom Hashoah 2005
Sixty-three years and eight days ago, on April 26, 1942, my great-uncle Leopold Müller and his wife Irene were marched on a roundabout route from a Gestapo gathering point in a small park in Würzburg through the city's streets to a train depot. There they left their luggage on the platform and boarded a train to the East. To their deaths.
The Nazis scrupulously documented this deportation. Dozens of photographs were taken, like the one you see here. My great-uncle and his wife are in this group. Somewhere.
(You can find many more pictures here. Type "wuerzburg" into the search field.")
But photographs were apparently not enough. The Nazis also hired someone to make a movie of the event. You can see the movie camera in this picture.
The photographs were discovered at war's end in a barracks, arranged in some Gestapo officer's photo album like so many vacation pictures.
The movie, however, has never been located.
I hope it will turn up someday. I would like to see it. Perhaps it would bring me a little closer to my great uncle, a man I have no way of remembering, and no way of forgetting.
Today I'm a bit more optimistic than usual that the movie might someday turn up. Pieces of this history continue to turn up, sixty-plus years later, in unexpected places.
Like this photograph, for example. A reader of this blog recently offered me this photo and about a dozen others that he pulled from a box of many hundreds of images that his father captured as a young ambulance driver in the U.S. military at the close of World War II. They were taken at a concentration camp believed to be Dachau.
The rest of the images are below the fold. Most of them are quite disturbing. They are not for the faint of heart. That's why you have to click to get to them.
They have never been published; they appear here for the first time. Most are self-explanatory; those that are not are followed by a brief explanation.
I publish them in the memory of my great uncle, who died like this, in the memory of the many millions of other victims of Nazi atrocities, and in honor of people like my reader's father, who liberated the camps, and who aided in the process of remembering in ways they could never have envisioned.
May such horror never befall any people again.
"Bodies loaded on railroad cars," explains the reader who sent me these—the son of the photographer. "Dad said that it looked like they were trying to dispose of the evidence, but that the American advance was too fast to allow them to do that. Prisoners told them that the SS had left several days before liberation, leaving only those who were ordered to stay to guard the camp."
"The dog kennels. They used German Shepherds, Rotweillers and Dobermans -- all extremely bright dogs and easy to train. You know what they were trained to do. What a waste. The kennels were empty when Dad's unit arrived."
"Not sure about this one," says the photographer's son. "This room definitely has a pile of bodies in it. Maybe a gas chamber? That would certainly go with the oven [above]."
"A guard giving himself up."
"Dead guards. Note how their boots have been stripped off by POWs."
"Soviet POWs celebrating their liberation with a drawing of Stalin," explains the photographer's son. "If they only realized what awaited them when they were repatriated."
Posted by Eric at May 5, 2005 12:13 AM
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Comments
Eric,
At one time I was very interested in WWII stuff, and read a lot about it. Now, I've found that I've forgotten many details. But, did US troops get in to Poland? I would not have thought so- it was all occupied by the Red Army, wasn't it? I know that my Russian friends were quite annoyed w/ the Movie Life is Sweet for showing US liberation of concentration camps that they claimed must have been liberated by the Red Army (just one more example of the US trying to steal their glory, they said). I had to admit I didn't know. What would a US ambulance be doing in Poland? I'm not doubting the story of the person who gave you the photos at all- I'm merely ignorant and confused here.
Posted by: Matt at May 5, 2005 12:13 AM
These photos remind me that if it was up to this Administration, the US government could lock-up American citizens and throw away the key on executive say-so as "enemies of the state" -- a phrase I vaguely remember as popular while growing up and about as real, I thought then, in describing what the government could do to Americans as space ships in Roswell, NM. This administration came up short in the SCOTUS [but it did have at least one "true believer" in the accuracy of this Executive's judgment on all things security]. But the Administration's zeal in prosecuting its position scares the hell out of me. As if the photos aren't wrenching enough, it's overwhelming to think how close we are, as a political body, to remembering nothing.
Posted by: marc at May 5, 2005 1:58 AM
The pictures were from Dachau, which is outside Munich in Bavaria, Germany. The concentration camp there was liberated by US soldiers in 1945.
Posted by: Kevin P. at May 5, 2005 8:49 AM
Thanks for the clarification, kevin. I appreciate it.
Posted by: Matt at May 5, 2005 10:09 AM
Thanks, Eric. We all need to be reminded sometimes.
Posted by: Ruby at May 5, 2005 2:18 PM
The pictures of the corpses on railroad cars do indeed look like they probably came from Dachau. U.S. soldiers liberating the camp found around 35 railroad cars packed with corpses of men, women, and children in various stages of decomposition.
Posted by: Orac at May 6, 2005 1:08 PM
Horrible... It reminds me that I once skipped class in acting school in New York to see an afternoon screening of Claude Lanzmann's SHOAH - it was something like 9 hours long, every minute of it riveting.
Posted by: John A at May 6, 2005 2:57 PM
These are some very powerful pictures of Dachau, which I have been too. One senses the evil on the trip there...the most troubling aspect is how close people are willing to live to this place. The tour guides also note that that gas chambers were never used though the ovens were...actually there were two different sets of ovens on the site...they have turned around the entrance so that one no longer enters through the Arbeit Macht Frei main gate along the former railroad tracks, but rather through a cute out in the wall around it on from an old access road near plants that used slave labor from the camp...ughh...
Posted by: David Merkowitz at May 7, 2005 1:24 AM
Your comment that you would like to find the video so that you could grow closer to your great uncle strikes me.
I can't imagine how I could grow closer to any of my ancestors by looking at pictures or videos taken from the viewpoint of evil men. It's like asking Hannibal Lecter to describe for you a loved one whom he ate snd how they tasted.
I would rather find other avenues of getting to know who they were through family and survivor friends (if they could be found) than to see them portrayed as they are in these pictures over and over again.
Posted by: steve b at May 7, 2005 3:43 PM
My husband went to Dachau the summer after college. It really shook him up--his family didn't lose anyone that he knows of, his grandparents are all 2nd or 3rd generation Americans & I think their parents had lost touch with the relatives in the old country by then. Nevertheless, for anyone Jewish it's a shock.
I am converting this year. Reform, so I will routinely flout many of the 613 mitzvot, but I hope I never break the 614th.
Posted by: Katherine at May 7, 2005 10:10 PM
Eric, thank you for all these incredible, extremely horrific photos. Can find no more words really to say about them, except to damm all those responsible to Eternal Dammnation in Hell!
Katherine: "for anyone Jewish it's a shock".
As well as for anyone who is human.
Marc: What you said in comparing the current US Administration to the Nazis Concentration Camps is an Obscenity.
Posted by: David All at May 9, 2005 7:39 PM
well of course. But it seemed to add another layer and made the shock last longer. It was not just "how could any human being to this to another", it was "this could have been me and my family." That is true for all of us but I think it's pretty common to feel it more acutely the more characteristics we share with the victim. He felt like he had to get out of Germany as quickly as possible afterwards, he said.
Posted by: Katherine at May 11, 2005 3:19 AM
Concerning Steve B's comment about how strange it is why Eric would want to see more images, even film of his uncle in such an unfortunate position...
I totally get what Eric's driving at, as irrational as it may seem.
One of my desires (well, a need) is to see crime scene photos of my sister's murder. At one time I was ashamed of admitting this, until I talked to the Director of Parents of Murdered Children (POMC), who confessed she had the same desire.
I think it has to do with a will to connect on any level that is available to you.
Posted by: john a at May 17, 2005 8:43 PM
Oh my! The top pictures are horrible... People should see such things from time to time... perhaps that could help them be aware of a war is and resolve conflicts in a peaceful way.
Anita
Ambulance Nurse
Posted by: Ambulance Nurse at July 7, 2005 6:38 AM