No Atrocities in the SS Officer's Album — Only Blueberries and Holidays
A private photo album kept by an SS officer records not atrocities but holidays, dinners and blueberry picking; it proves the men who carried out the killing knew exactly what they were doing, and it is a reminder that understanding the Holocaust means looking at the perpetrators.
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Historians assumed an album like this should not exist at all
In January 2007, Rebecca Erbelding, a historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, received a letter from a retired lieutenant colonel. After the war the man had found a photo album in a rubbish bin in an abandoned apartment in Frankfurt, and he was not sure whether it had any historical value. Rebecca agreed to take a look, but she was not optimistic at first: SS officers at Auschwitz were rarely photographed, and families often destroyed pictures like these. When the album arrived at the museum, the first page immediately overturned her expectations: it read ‘Auschwitz’, and the date was 21 June 1944.
— Jane WilkinsonThe strangest images are not the atrocities but the picnics
The album holds 116 black-and-white photographs, almost all of them smaller than a playing card, mounted across 31 pages. Rebecca first looked for trains and prisoners, and found not a single one. What she saw were men in uniform at parties, ceremonies and picnics, sunbathing, singing together, lighting candles on a Christmas tree, enjoying dinner and wine. That is what makes this source so perverse: it is not a set of photographs about the atrocities of Auschwitz, but a set of photographs about how the perpetrators enjoyed their time there.
— Jane WilkinsonThe men in these pictures were not bystanders but the killers themselves
Turning the pages, Rebecca recognised Josef Mengele, the most notorious doctor at Auschwitz, known as the ‘Angel of Death’, responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Jews and the personal supervisor of horrific medical experiments. Mengele's presence in the photographs proves that the men in the album were part of the SS garrison at Auschwitz. This is not a scene a bystander happened to capture; these are keepsakes that the men carrying out the killing kept and admired themselves.
— Jane WilkinsonShooting a prisoner who tried to escape earned a guard a holiday
Several pages show young women in uniform — the camp's radio and telephone operators — on holiday at Solahütte in the Polish mountains, an SS retreat. In the photographs the women hold bowls of blueberries, raise their spoons, are caught mid-bite. Rebecca says it looks like a work outing, a reward for service. One concrete example: a guard who successfully shot a prisoner attempting to escape was rewarded with leave at Solahütte. Efficiency at killing was institutionalised as performance worth rewarding.
— Rebecca ErbeldingThe men laying flowers for comrades were also opening the gas chambers
What stood out most to Rebecca was a row of coffins draped in Nazi flags, captioned ‘burying our SS comrades after a terror attack’ — American bombers had aimed at a nearby factory and killed several officers by mistake. The photographs show flowers, widows, a long funeral procession. She notes that the contrast with the way these men treated Jewish bodies is staggering. What this section brings out is how the same men could stage a solemn funeral for their own and send another group of people into the gas chambers.
— Rebecca ErbeldingThis is not an official archive but an adjutant's private keepsake
Almost every page features the same face: Karl Höcker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz, who had previously worked at other camps as well. He was familiar with the operation of the gas chambers, and his job was to help his superior make the decisions required to run an extermination facility. Rebecca says these photographs record how much fun Höcker was having — personal moments he wanted to keep for himself. That is what turns the album from ‘anonymous photographs’ into one of the pieces of evidence that could identify criminals at the postwar Frankfurt trials.
— Jane WilkinsonThe absence of prisoners in the frame does not disprove the killing
Because there are no prisoners in the album, Rebecca and her colleagues worried for a time that Holocaust deniers would seize on it: look how much fun they were having, how could they possibly have been murdering that many people at the same time? She stresses that this inference is plainly wrong. What stands behind the camera is the reality of Auschwitz: tens of thousands of prisoners held there, tortured, starved and brutalised every day, and the men in the album were the ones doing it. That worry also explains why the exhibition had to be careful about the context in which the photographs were presented.
— Rebecca ErbeldingTo understand the Holocaust you have to look at the perpetrators
Rebecca closes with the central judgement of the whole episode: if you want to understand how the Holocaust happened, you cannot look only at the victims — you have to look at the perpetrators. This was not a society in which everyone had been brainwashed; people actively chose to take part, because it was easier, and because they were told it was the right thing to do. The album also proves that Höcker's claim to have ‘sat behind a desk the whole time and not known the truth’ was a lie: he is standing next to Rudolf Höss, Mengele and Kramer, and you cannot be in that company without really knowing.
— Rebecca ErbeldingIn their own words · checked verbatim
In 116 images, SS officers are pictured laughing, singing and celebrating while a short distance away more than a million people, most of them Jews are being murdered
Jane Wilkinson0:52
he had found a photograph album in a closet, in a trash can in an abandoned apartment in Frankfurt and he had taken it home with him
Rebecca Erbelding1:15
The black and white photos most just smaller than a playing card are carefully pasted across 31 pages
Jane Wilkinson2:05
What I saw were photos of people attending parties, people attending ceremonies, the leisure time of people in uniform, smiling and looking at the camera
Rebecca Erbelding2:25
and you see the women receiving bowls of blueberries holding up their spoons taking bites
Jane Wilkinson4:10
and it is so striking the difference between the way they treat Jewish people and Jewish bodies and the way they venerate their fallen comrades
Rebecca Erbelding5:05
Do you think any of the people were photographed in that album Do you think any of them could possibly not have known what was going on No, I think they all knew?
Jane Wilkinson & Rebecca Erbelding5:41
And so you can't understand how the Holocaust happened by looking at the victims. You have to look at the perpetrators.
Rebecca Erbelding8:45
Figures
| Photographs in the album | 116 | 0:52 |
| Pages in the album | 31 | 2:05 |
| Date on the album's cover | 21 June 1944 | 1:40 |
| Höcker's sentence | 7 years | 7:50 |
| Year the Frankfurt trials began | 1963 | 7:15 |
| Höcker's time at Auschwitz | 8 months | 6:20 |
Glossary
- Solahütte
- An SS holiday retreat not far from Auschwitz; officers and female staff who performed well went there to pick blueberries and take leave.
- Counterintelligence Corps
- The US Army unit that interrogated German prisoners of war and screened for war criminals after the Second World War.
- Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials
- Trials held in Frankfurt from 1963 of mid- and lower-ranking Auschwitz officers; Höcker was sentenced to seven years in them.
How to listen
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