Photos inédites de la Shoah

"Il faut se poser des questions sur la validité de la culture dont les valeurs illusoires étaient, ici, en Europe, enseignées à tous depuis la petite école, aussi bien aux tueurs qu’aux victimes." "Des milliers d’enfants vont à l’école avec leurs cartables sur le dos pour se rencontrer à nouveau comme bourreaux et victimes dans les antichambres des fours crématoires, devant les fosses communes." Imre Kertész

Ynet: Cette photo d'un groupe d'enfants juifs fut prise pendant l'Holocauste (l'extermination de six millions de Juifs européens par les nazis et leurs alliés, dont un million et demi d'enfants). Le photographe est un soldat de la Wehrmacht.  Il est clair que forcer des enfants juifs à faire le salut nazi amusait la soldatesque allemande. Un instantané de l'enfer que les Juifs européens ont vécu.

L'institut Shem Olam a lancé un projet l'année dernière dans le but de rassembler des photo de Juifs pendant l'Holocauste. Il ne s'agit pas de photos de propagande devenues célèbres, mais de photos prises par des troupes allemandes. Comme n'importe quel militaire, ils documentaient leur travail, et collaient ces photo dans des albums à côté de leurs propres photos et de celles de leurs camarades. La plupart des propriétaires de ces albums veulent se débarrasser de photos qui rappellent les liens des membres de leurs famille avec l'Allemagne nazie.

Sur les deux photos ci-dessous, un soldat allemand pose avec un Juif.  Parfois des soldats allemands rencontraient un Juif dont l'apparence correspondait à celle que les nazis avaient développé sur la race inférieure. Les soldats se faisaient alors photographier afin d'illustrer la race aryenne à côté de la race inférieure.

Les deux photos ci-dessous furent prises dans un centre de convalescence pour soldats allemands. Les Allemands faisaient venir des Juifs pour laver leurs voitures et effectuer des travaux humiliants. Les photos montrent que - dans un raffinement de cruauté - des hommes physiquement faibles étaient choisis pour exécuter ces tâches.

During the invasion of Poland, photographer Leni Riefenstahl was in the town of Końskie while 30 citizens were being executed in revenge for an alleged revolt against German soldiers. According to her memoirs, Riefenstahl tried to stop the execution but an angry German soldier threatened to shoot her on the spot. She claimed she did not know the victims were Jewish. This picture shows the building next to which the Jews were shot to death.

Forced labor in Radom, a city in central Poland

This photo from the Warsaw Ghetto appears to be staged. German soldiers likely came across the synagogue and ordered the worshippers to pose for a picture.

General photos. The German soldiers kept their pictures in the album alongside the pictures they took of Jews.

On the stairs of the Sages of Lublin Yeshiva. A German soldier photographed a singing group playing for passersby outside the ghetto. The Sages of Lublin Yeshiva was the most famous Jewish institutions at the time and was abandoned after all Jews were pushed into the ghetto.

The burning of the synagogue in Kotzk. This 1941 photos shows the Jewish synagogue on fire. These pictures were attached to photos in which German soldiers documented the collection of gravestones from the Kotzk cemetery, apparently for the purpose of construction or paving roads. The phenomenon of torching synagogues in Poland was well-known, but there is hardly any documentation of these incidents.

Warsaw Ghetto. Hundreds of pictures of the ghetto's streets were found during the search, revealing the Jews' daily life.

A Jewish child's funeral in 1941, in a small town in Poland which did not have an organization handling burial arrangements. The soldiers came across an improvised funeral procession held by the family of a little boy.

The soldier sitting in the car passed by Jewish villages and towns and took pictures of the people he encountered. It seems that they weren't afraid of him and cooperated with the picture taking.

Forced labor in Krakow. Soldiers supervising the forced labor took a series of pictures showing Jews in the camps. Some of those Wehrmacht soldiers took pictures of the same people over time, so the pictures can teach us quite a lot about their lives

Forced labor in Krakow

German soldiers destroying a cemetery in the Rzeszów. The Germans often used the tombstones as construction material, as can be learned from the documents and pictures found. Sometimes bids were issued for Polish contractors to destroy the gravestones in order to use the marble and stone.

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