‘A Horrific Impression of Jewish Martyrdom’: Regarding Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures

Abstract

One of the first publications of the Central Jewish Historical Commission (Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna, CŻKH) in Poland after the Holocaust was a multilingual folio volume of photos, Zagłada żydostwa polskiego: Album zdjęć; Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures, published in 1946. This article aspires to recover this relatively unknown album from near-oblivion and situate it in the history of Holocaust photography while shedding light on its distinguishing features. Most of the album's photos were taken by German photographers. With this in mind, the author argues that the aim of the album's editor, Gerzon Taffet, and the CŻKH was to use German-produced photos in their possession, with all of their inherent limitations, to document Nazi anti-Jewish crimes in Poland and to bring an international mass audience, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, closer to the horrors of the Nazi persecution and murder of Polish Jews. At the end of the album, however, Taffet and the CŻKH inserted photos taken by Jews that extol Jewish resistance in an attempt to subvert the ‘German gaze’ that permeates the album with the ‘Jewish gaze.’

KEYWORDS:

• Holocaust
• Poland
• postwar
• photography

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Natalia Aleksiun, Lukas Meissel, and Olga Kartashova, as well as the anonymous readers for their close reading of a draft of this article and valuable suggestions for improvement. I alone am responsible for any possible errors in the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Gabriel N. Finder is professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia.

Notes

1 The album's cover is in Polish and English, while its title page, foreword, introduction, and captions appear in six languages: Polish, English, Russian, French, Hebrew, and Yiddish. However, annotations of the album's photos in an appendix are written only in Polish and English.

2 Many of the photographs in Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures can be found in archival collections, museum exhibitions, and various publications. To give one example, several of the album's photos, in particular those from Międzyrzec Podlaski, appear in both the original and revised edition of Christopher Browning's seminal book Ordinary Men, but absent reference to the album. In the revised edition, Browning mentions that reproductions of photos from Międzyrzec were given to German prosecutors by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the successor to the CŻKH, for the trial in Hamburg of personnel of Reserve Police Battalion 101. The photos in Browning's book derive from the trial record. See Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, rev. ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 2017), p. 274. (The first edition of Ordinary Men was published in 1992.)

3 Philip Friedman, foreword to Gerszon Taffet, (ed.), Zagłada żydostwa polskiego: Album zdjęć; Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures (Lodz: Wydawnictwo Centralnej Żydowskiej Komisji Historycznej przy C.K. Żydów Polskich, 1945). When Friedman left Poland in 1946, Nachman Blumental became the CŻKH's director. Friedman became a leading historian of the destruction of Polish Jewry. See Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust (New York and Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980). On Friedman, see Natalia Aleksiun, “Philip Friedman and the Emergence of Holocaust Scholarship: A Reappraisal,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, vol. 11 (2012): pp. 333–46; Roni Stauber, “Philip Friedman and the Beginning of Holocaust Studies,” in David Bankier and Dan Michman, (eds.), Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009), pp. 83–102.

4 The year of publication on the album's title page is 1945. The date December 1945 appears at the end of Friedman's foreword and Taffet's introduction to the album. But internal CŻKH documents indicate that the album was published in 1946. “Wydawnictwo Centralnej Żydowskiej Komisji Historycznej w Polsce” (n.d.), Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), RG-15.182 M, Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna przy Centralnym Komitecie Żydów w Polsce (CŻKH), 303/XX/183, fols. 15–18; “Oysgabes fun der tsentraler yidisher historisher komisye in poyln” (n.d.), USHMM, RG-15.182M, CŻKH, 303/XX/183, fols. 19–22.

5 See, for example, Janina Struk, Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 211–16; Carolyn J. Dean, The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2019), pp. 152–70.

6 Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 71 (emphasis in original).

7 Ibid., p. 72 (emphasis in original).

8 Ibid., p. 73. In this vein, Linfield is decidedly impatient with contemporary critics who are dismissive of Holocaust and atrocity photographs because they are ostensibly pornographic and desensitize viewers to the suffering of others. Holocaust and atrocity photographs appear pornographic only to those who want to remain immunized from and unsullied by the world's cruellest moments, while compassion for the suffering of strangers and intervention on their behalf have always been atypical of, and truly exceptional among, human beings. ‘Try to imagine,’ Linfield asks, ‘if only for a moment, what your political, intellectual, and ethical would be like if you had never seen a photograph.’ Ibid., pp. 45–6, quote on p. 46.

9 Laura Jockusch, Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 84–120; Natalia Aleksiun, “The Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, 1944–1947,” Polin, vol. 20 (2008): pp. 74–97.

10 Tally for 1946 (n.d.), USHMM, RG-15.182M, CŻKH, 303/XX/190, fol. 33.

11 Jockusch, Collect and Record!, p. 104; see also Aleksiun, “The Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland,” pp. 84–5.

12 Friedman, foreword to Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews.

13 “Zestawienie książek sprzedanych i wydanych na cele propag[andy] w roku 1946 i do 1.9.1947 roku” (n.d.), USHMM, RG-15.182M, CŻKH, 303/XX/192, fol. 17.

14 American Joint Distribution Committee, The Extermination; of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures; Der khurbn fun poylishn yidntum: Fotografisher album; Hurban yehudei polin: Kovetz tzilumim (American Joint Distribution Committee: Berlin, n.d.).

15 The following biographical information about Taffet derives principally from Natalia Aleksiun, “Posłowie,” in Gerszon Taffet, Zagłada Żydow żółkiewskich, rev. ed. (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2019), pp. 171–5. This is an annotated edition of the original 1946 text. The extensive annotations are provided by Aleksiun and Shuki Ecker. I am indebted to Natalia Aleksiun for drawing my attention to the revised edition of Taffet's book. Taffet is further mentioned in Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes against Humanity” (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016), pp. 339–40.

16 Taffet, Zagłada Żydow żółkiewskich, rev. ed., p. 55, n. 21.

17 Ibid., pp. 77–9.

18 Salo Wittmayer Baron, introduction to Friedman, Roads to Extinction, p. 4; see also Roni Stauber, “Darko shel Filip Fridman be-heker ha-Shoah,” Gal-Ed, vol. 21 (2007): p. 81.

19 Taffet, Zagłada Żydow żółkiewskich, rev. ed., p. 21.

20 Taffet was not alone in recognizing his book's methodological deficiencies. In his foreword to the book, Józef Kermisz, the CŻKH's secretary general and a trained historian who had received his doctorate from the University of Warsaw before the war, questions the book's methodological soundness – a book published by the historical commission in which he played a leading role! On the one hand, Kermisz lauds Taffet's thorough familiarity with the region, and for this reason ‘not one important phenomenon escaped him; he did not forget any significant event.’ On the other hand, Kermisz encourages readers to treat certain accounts in the book, which is based on the memories of the author and other eyewitnesses, with a healthy dose of skepticism, since memory of certain events described in the book ‘might from the perspective of several years turn pale’ [blado]. The book's methodological shortcomings aside, Kermisz ultimately deems it a worthy contribution to the history of Jewish martyrdom under Nazi occupation. Józef Kermisz, foreword to Taffet, Zagłada Żydow żółkiewskich, rev. ed., pp. 17, 19. On Kermisz's unease with Taffet's book, see Aleksiun, “The Jewish Historical Commission in Poland,” pp. 84–5; see also Aleksiun, “Posłowie,” pp. 186–8.

21 Aleksiun, “Posłowie,” pp. 177–9.

22 Friedman, foreword to Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews.

23 Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures.

24 One finds a parallel preoccupation with the prelude to extermination in Taffet's book on the fate of the Jewish community of Żółkiew. As Aleksiun observes, ‘Taffet wrote Zagłada Żydow żółkiewskich as a tragic page in the history of Jews as seen through the prism of one town. . . . Taffet, as a chronicler and witness, described the fate of Żółkiew's Jews and their destruction.’ Aleksiun, “Posłowie,” p. 180.

25 Noe Grüss, Rok pracy Centralnej Zydowskiej Komisji Historycznej (Lodz: Wydawnictwo Centralnej Żydowskiej Komisji Historycznej przy C. K. Żydów Polskich, 1946), p. 14; see also Diana Grünbaum, “Zbiory Centralnej Żydowskiej Komisji Historycznej w Polsce,” part II of Grüss, Rok pracy, p. 48.

26 Grünbaum, “Zbiory,” p. 48; see also lists of photos in the CŻKH's archives classified according to location (n.d), USHMM, RG-15.182M, CŻKH, 303/XX/258, fols. 2–60.

27 Grünbaum, “Zbiory,” p. 49.

28 Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures; see also Szaje Szechatow, Yorn fun kamf und gerangl (Ramat Gan, Israel: Lior, 1973), p. 43.

29 Struk, Photographing the Holocaust, p. 95; see also Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel, “Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Photos,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 26 (1998): p. 271.

30 Struk, Photographing the Holocaust, pp. 70–3; see also Linfield, Cruel Radiance, p. 68.

31 Grüss, Rok pracy, p. 14. On Zonabend, see Jockusch, Collect and Record!, p. 100. I am indebted to Olga Kartashova for the information that Zonabend was a photographer for the CŻKH. On Hendler, see “Zaświedczenie,” 1 August [1945], USHMM, RG-15.182M, CŻKH, 303/XX/54, fol. 45; see also his survivor registration card (n.d.), Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute Warsaw (ŻIH), 303/V/427, fols. 11155, 12376. I am grateful to Katarzyna Person for locating documents pertaining to Hendler. Zonabend did not limit his endeavors to procure photographs just for the CŻKH. He also saved the prints of some of Mendel Grossman's photographs of inhabitants of the Lodz ghetto; these prints, along with other documents from the Lodz ghetto, were taken out of Poland after the war and made their way to Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-Geta’ot and other Israeli institutions devoted to the memory of the Holocaust. See Arieh Ben-Menahem, “Mendel Grossman: The Photographer of the Lodz Ghetto,” in Zvi Szner and Alexander Sened, (eds.), Mendel Grossman: With a Camera in the Ghetto (n.p. [Israel]: Ghetto Fighters’ House and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1970). According to Szaje Szechatow, some individual Jewish survivors in Poland collected German photographs and constructed photo albums out of them. See Szechatow, Yorn fun kamf und gerangl, p. 43. Szechatow, who survived the Holocaust in the USSR, served as a judge on the Polish Jewish honor court in the immediate postwar period. See Gabriel N. Finder, “Judenrat on Trial: Postwar Polish Jewry Sits in Judgment of Its Wartime Leadership,” in Laura Jockusch and Gabriel N. Finder, (eds.), Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2015), pp. 100–1.

32 On these photographs, see Browning, Ordinary Men, rev. ed., pp. 273–83; see also Jürgen Matthäus and Christopher R. Browning, “Evidenz, Erinnerung, Trugbild: Fotoalben zum Polizeibattalion 101 im ‘Osteinsatz,’” in Martin Cüppers, Jürgen Matthäus, and Andrej Angrick, (eds.), Naziverbrechen: Täter, Taten, Bewältigungsversuche (Darmstadt: WBG, 2013), pp. 152–8.

33 Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel emphasize the photographers’ antisemitic frame of mind. In their study of German photographs, Levin and Uziel ‘assumed as a point of departure that the antisemitic climate and propaganda in Nazi Germany had an immense impact on the entire population.’ Levin and Uziel, “Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Photos,” p. 291.

34 This was Shechatow's understanding, which he shared with other survivors, including Taffet. See Shechatow Yorn fun kamf und gerangl, p. 43.

35 In their study of photographs taken by the personnel of Reserve Police Battalion 101, which was responsible for the deaths of several thousand Jews in Poland, Jürgen Matthäus and Christopher Browning, questioning Levin and Uziel's basic assumption, write: ‘What the photos do not offer are insights into the men's motivations, and if something to do with the images is surprising, it is the absence, not the presence of indications of a murderous ideology.’ Matthäus and Browning, “Evidenz, Erinnerung, Trugbild,” p. 162. See also Browning, Ordinary Men, rev. ed., p. 289. Retreating somewhat from their argument, Levin and Uziel acknowledge that their research ‘does not maintain that every soldier and policeman in the Third Reich who photographed Jews did so out of ideological conviction.’ Levin and Uziel, “Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Photos,” p. 291.

36 Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews, p. 67 (photo 159) and appendix. The caption in English reads, ‘Międzyrzec Podlaski: Germans after the Massacre.’ The annotation in the appendix is more telling: ‘A group of Germans, who carried out the “Aktion.” They boast with their prey, found in the bread-loaves, in one a revolver, in another – jewels. In the middle (a “kepi” on his head) the Gendarme Franz Bauer, the worst sadist of the pack, surnamed by the Jews ‘der szleger mytn hynt’ [the violent man with the dog], detached after some time to the death-camp at Majdanek.’

37 See Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014).

38 See Browning, Ordinary Men, rev. ed., p. 254.

39 See, for example, the numerous arresting images of public hangings and the macabre aftermath of executions in League of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, 1939–1945: We Have Not Forgotten (Warsaw: Polonia Publishing House, 1959).

40 Ulrich Baer quotes the reaction of a survivor of the Lodz ghetto to the photo album, recovered in 1987, of Walter Genewein, the head accountant in the Nazi administration of the ghetto. Genewein created a large number of slides taken inside the ghetto from 1941 to 1944, when it was liquidated. ‘It was a shock. It was a shock that they [the slides] existed,’ exclaimed Arnold Mostowicz, the survivor. Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), p. 140.

41 Aleksiun, “Posłowie,” pp. 183–6.

42 As mentioned above, the ŻIH, the successor to the CŻKH, did send photos of the 26 May 1943 roundup of some 1,000 Jews in Międzyrzec Podlaski who had been deported to Majdanek by Reserve Police Battalion 101 to prosecutors in Hamburg for the trial of members of the battalion in the 1960s. By the conclusion of the appeals process in 1972, only two of the fourteen defendants were sentenced to short prison terms. See Browning, Ordinary Men, rev. ed., pp. 144–5, 274.

43 On Stroop's trial, see Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin, Justice behind the Iron Curtain: Nazis on Trial in Communist Poland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 147–75. None of the photos from Stroop's album, some of which have become iconic, are included in Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures, which is not surprising since Stroop's album was introduced as evidence at the Nuremberg Trial in December 1945, just barely before publication of the CKŻP's album. The Polish authorities received Stroop's album only after the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trial in October 1946. There is a set of three images in Extermination of Polish Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but they are not reproduced in Stroop's album; they seem to have been taken by a German photographer. Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews, p. 98 (photos 236–238).

44 See Struk, Photographing the Holocaust, pp. 77, 94–8.

45 The barber gazes directly into the camera. ‘For a fleeting moment,’ Urlich Baer writes, ‘his [the barber's] face has been retrieved from the Nazi gaze, and the incontestable power differential between Nazi and Jew has been erased. . . . They [the viewers] are made to feel addressed, and the right to appeal, to look back, to accuse, or to denounce is restored to the Jew who was captured, framed and labelled by the Nazi photographer.’ Baer, Spectral Evidence, pp. 156, 169.

46 Taffet, Extermination of Polish Jews, p. 42 (photo 114) and appendix.

47 Ibid., p. 23 (photo 63) and appendix.

48 Struk, Photographing the Holocaust, p. 90.

49 Taffet, Extermination of Polish Jews, p. 33 (photo 90) and appendix. The caption reads in English, translated directly from Polish: ‘Slave workers present time.’ The annotation in the appendix reads: ‘Galley slaves of our times (Photo-montage). Slave work of the Jews in the Ghetto of Łódź.’ From the perspective of the Judenrat, a photo taken by Grossman for its official album of inhabitants of the ghetto pulling a wagon filled with excrement might demonstrate efficiency, but the same photo could have been intended by its photographer to evoke a different impression. In his homage to Grossman, Ben-Menachem writes, ‘The people [in the ghetto] knew Mendel and wanted him to photograph them. In one incident, a whole family passed the street dragging a wagon filled with excrement, a father, mother, son and daughter, the parents in front pulling, and the children pushing from all sides. Mendel stopped but did not take out his camera; he hesitated to photograph the degradation of those people. But the head of the family halted and asked Mendel to photograph. “Let it remain for the future, let others know how humiliated we were.” Mendel no longer hesitated.’ Ben-Menachem, “Mendel Grossman.”

50 Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews, p. 36 (photo 98) and appendix. The caption in English reads: ‘They came and went away.’ The explanation in the English appendix, which hews to the caption and explanation in Polish, reads, however: ‘“The came . . . they went” . . . (photo-montage). We see Jews coming to the Ghetto, and then leaving . . . for an unknown destiny.’

51 Taffet, Extermination of Polish Jews, p. 40 (photo 109) and appendix. The caption in English reads: ‘Photo-montage: Where are they going? (45,000 Jews exported from the Ghetto, disappeared without any trace.)’ The corresponding explanation in the English appendix reads: ‘“45,000 Jews expulsed from the Ghetto – disappeared . . . without any trace” (photo-montage). We see grown-ups and children going for ‘transmigration’ (‘Aussiedlung’). Photo-montage from the Ghetto in Łódź.’

52 Ben-Menachem, “Mendel Grossman.”

53 Jockusch, Collect and Record!, p. 104.

54 Szechatow, Yorn fun kamf und gerangl, p. 44.

55 Letter from Włodzimierz Brzezicki to CŻKH, 16 April 1946, USHMM, RG-15.182M, CŻKH, 303/XX/144, fols. 63–64. I am indebted to Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak for drawing my attention to this letter. The photos in question are numbered 99 on page 37 and 103, 104, and 105 on page 38 of the album.

56 Korespondencja przychodząca do CŻKH, 12 December 1946, USHMM, RG-15.182M, CŻKH, 303/XX/372, fols. 130–131. I am indebted to Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak for drawing my attention to these minutes.

57 Taffet, Extermination of Polish Jews, p. 102 (photo 246) and appendix. The caption in English reads: ‘Photomontage – we shall survive.’ The corresponding explanation in the English appendix reads: ‘“We will keep on” (photo-montage) made in the Ghetto of Łódź.’

58 Ben-Menachem's photomontages appear on pages 11 (photo 30), 27 (photo 73), 33 (photo 90), 36 (photo 98), 40 (photo 109), and 102 (photo 246) of the CŻKH's album. On Ben-Menachem and his photomontages, see Struk, Photographing the Holocaust, pp. 89–94. Several of the photomontages that appear in the album can be seen on the website of the Ghetto Fighters’ House (Beit Lohamei Ha-Geta’ot) Archive. The photomontage inscribed “Przetrwamy!” can been seen at http://www.infocenters.co.il/gfh/notebook_ext.asp?item=31478&site=gfh&lang=ENG&menu=1 (accessed 13 July 2020). Photomontage was a popular art form in Lodz spearheaded by avant-garde artist Władysław Strzemiński, who had many Jewish friends and students. On Strzemiński, see Jaroslaw Suchan and Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Katarzyna Kobro, Władysław Strzemiński: Une avant-garde polonaise; Katarzyna Kobro, Władysław Strzemiński: A Polish Avant-Garde (Paris: Éditions Skira; Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2018). I am grateful to Joanna Michlic for drawing my attention to Strzemiński.

59 Ben-Menachem, “Mendel Grossman.”

60 Taffet, (ed.), Extermination of Polish Jews, pp. 103–4 (photos 247–252).

61 In concluding thoughts on the efficacy of Jewish resistance, David Engel writes, ‘In the end, though, Jews throughout Nazi-occupied Europe had virtually no realistic options for inducing the Germans to abandon their murder programme through their own actions. . . Rescue or protection on a mass scale required significant non-Jewish action.’ David Engel, The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews (Harlow, England: Longman, 2000), p. 71.

62 Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven and Yale: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 165, 199 (emphasis in original).

63 Sands, East West Street, p. 372.