ARTICLES POETRY BOOKS EMAIL JOHN HOME
Photos of Victims Speak of the Holocaust
by John J. Dunphy
One would hardly think that seeing old photographs of people one never knew would be an unforgettable experience. But some photos I saw at the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center in Creve Couer, Missouri proved to be precisely that.
The exhibit, called "The Last Album: Eyes From the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau," consisted of selected photos from a book of the same title by Ann Weiss. The photos are of Jews who were murdered by the Nazis at that death camp. Jews who had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau brought these photos with them.
Somehow, the photos escaped destruction and were discovered by Weiss in 1986. The exhibit noted that Weiss used traditional research methods as she attempted to identify the people in these photos. The "most powerful and compelling source," however, were Holocaust survivors who recognized their murdered relatives.
"I could not cry all these years since my family was murdered," one survivor told her. "You gave me back my tears. Now I can die a rich man!"
I saw a photo of a couple with a five year old son who were celebrating their eighth wedding anniversary. The man is wearing the Nazi-required yellow star identifying him as a "Jude." The information below a photo of a couple dancing noted that they had tried to live as Christians with false papers after the German invasion of Poland. The woman's blonde hair allowed her to pass, but her husband was caught and placed in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he died.
Then there was the photo of Artur and Greta Huppert and their little boy, Peterle. Both were sent to a slave labor camp. Records show that 844 of the 900 Jews in Artur's transport died at the camp, including Artur. We also know that 848 of the 900 Jews in Greta's transport perished, among them Greta. Peterle's fate remains unknown.
Some of the people photographed remain unidentified. I am still haunted by the images of a smiling little girl holding her doll, a laughing baby in a needlepoint chair and a mother and child playing peek-a-boo behind a tree.
Another photo depicted an unidentified young couple holding their baby, the father lovingly gazing at his child. Could they ever have imagined their fate when this shot was taken?
In his foreword to Weiss' book, Leon Wieselties wrote that "the evil in these photos we must supply, by summoning the dreadful knowledge that we possess about what was done to the Jews at Auschwitz." The museum's permanent display, which chronicles the history of the Holocaust from Hitler's rise to the liberation of the camps by the Allies, was just across the hall.
A wall mirror concluded the exhibit. Beneath it were the words: "See the eyes that peer back at you and recall a world that exists no more. And in your remembering, they 'live' once more."
I'll remember them, as will everyone who saw those photos. I hope that you now remember them as well.
published in The (Alton, Illinois) Telegraph; 12/09/01
| 
