Földvári Books

Holocaust Photography Collection

A Collection of 11 Photographs Taken in Nazi Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald During the Liberation.] Guerre 1939–45. Fotografias dos Campos de Concentracao. / Novas Provas da Barbaria Nazi.

[France(?); taken in Germany]: 1945.

11 vintage, black and white photographs ( Size: ca. 240 × 180 mm.). Each with an unidentified collection stamp, the stamp of the “Ministère de l'Information” seven of them also with the stamp of “Service Exploration Photographique”.

Together with two referring typewritten notes in French and Portuguese, and the residue of an envelope or folder of the Portuguese Red Cross, with handwritten title on front and typed label on recto “Novas Provas da Barbaria Nazi”.

The paper documents are yellowed due to aging, chipped at the edges with small tears, overall in very good condition. The photos are in fine condition.

A unique collection of eleven original photographs, documenting the shocking sites at Bergen Belsen and Buchenwald Concentration Camps after their liberation in April 1945.

A unique collection of eleven contemporary vintage black and white photographs taken in April-May 1945 shortly after the liberation of two of the major concentration camps in Germany: Bergen-Belsen (9 photos) and Buchenwald (2 photos). Each image is numbered on the verso and the corresponding title could be read on the accompanying typewritten document. Like the majority of Holocaust photography taken by military photographers, these photos are uncredited too. Some of the pictures (or their slightly alternative versions) could be found in major institutional collections (e.g. USHMM, Getty Images) often with different, sometimes inconsistent captions.

The majority of the pictures were taken in Bergen-Belsen, which was originally built as a POW camp in 1940, and converted into a concentration camp in 1943. It was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners, however by the end of the war more than 60,000 inmates were detained there. It is estimated that 50,000 people died in the camp of starvation, overwork, disease, and medical experiments, afterward the liberation about 500 people died daily of starvation and typhus, reaching nearly 14,000. The camp was liberated by the British 11th Armoured Division on April 15, 1945, and the camp commandant Josef Kramer was arrested, later executed. As the first major camp liberated by the allies, the horrors of the camp were documented on film and in pictures, and the event received a lot of press coverage. In this collection nine of these pictures are presented: the arrest of Josef Kramer; the renowned image of the group of the women camp guards (Hildegard Kanbach, Magdalene Kessel, Irene Haschke, Hertha Bothe and Hertha Ehlert); two horrifying images showing the countless unburied bodies at a site of a large field and in a forest; a picture of women removing the clothing from corpses to be burnt; a snapshot of liberated women huddle together; a portrait of an emaciated man on a bunk; an image of a charred corpse, here the label suggests that the Germans, before leaving the camp, burnt the inmates by flamethrowers, actually the picture was taken at the site of the Gardelegen massacre, a mass murder by burning people alive in a barn, perpetrated by the Germans on April 13, 1945 (in the collection of USHMM the photo is credited to E. R. Allen; Photograph Number: 75712A); and the famous picture of the 31 year old, emaciated Margit Schwartz, a Hungarian Jew in the hospital at Belsen Concentration Camp (this image together with the one photographed in Budapest just before she was deported is exhibited at the Hungarian exhibition in Auschwitz).

The collection also includes two portraits of Jewish boys at the Buchenwald concentration camp, survivors of Block 66, the Kinderblock of the camp. Buchenwald was the largest concentration camp in Germany, due to the rapidly increasing number of children in the camp the Children's Block was created in 1945. 21,000 inmates were liberated by the U.S. Army on April 11, 1945, among them 904 were children.

Price: €8,000.00