Auschwitz

Thanks for these. From 60+ years' distance it's mind-boggling, still. The valises with the names is particularly powerful, and the last one, of the open gate and tower in the distance, is as well.

This is one of those places people need to see.
 
A few years back I was in Dachau, a similar extermination camp. Made some pictures as well.

It made me very thoughtful, walking though the barracks and buildings, among bored kids. The things we do to each other...
 
Thanks for sharing Nobbylon,

I agree, everyone needs to visit this place at least once in their life. I was there a few years ago. It was deadly cold at the time, but what touched me most were the rooms full of suitcases, spectacles, shoes, human hair. Together with that hallway full of pictures of the prisoners.
 
In a sinful attitude I will depart from my good habits and address just the formal and external here, the pictures as forms and compositions of a far historycal cathastrophe.

Surprisingly within the set, I have been most attracted by the color images, instinctively, as more "real". Wasn't one supposed to react in the opposite way ?

Cheers,
Ruben
 
Sobering pictures nobbylon. I spent some time in Berlin recently and visited Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg, north west of the city. It was a harrowing experience. Sachsenhausen was not a death camp but a model work camp where a lot of people people died either because they were worked to death or they were subjects in medical experiments. I took many pictures there but ended up only sending the first and last to family and friends. The first is the entry gate at Building A, which is identical to the building in your last but one shot, and the last is the view from the back door of Building Z. No real need to show anything in between.
 
Ronald_H said:
A few years back I was in Dachau, a similar extermination camp. Made some pictures as well.

It made me very thoughtful, walking though the barracks and buildings, among bored kids. The things we do to each other...
Click to expand...

Famous last words Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, "What you mean we, white man?"
 
kshapero said:
Famous last words Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, "What you mean we, white man?"
Click to expand...

In the history of almost every country or culture terrible things can be found. I am Dutch and I am a white man. Look into the history books what role those quaint Dutch played in the slave trade...

WWII has been discussed endlessy before, and I really don't want to start a discussion about it here.

It suffices to say that we should remember what once happened, to teach our children and pray that something like that never will happen again... Just look at the Balkans in recent years, or Darfur now...

When I was 12 years old we had a field trip at school. We visited the national War museum. Us kids climbed on the hulks of tanks and played war, because that's wat kids do. But I was just about old enough too realise that the pictures, proclamations and clippings inside were real. Curfews, execution orders, artifacts from camps. I go there about once a year to remind me, yes, to remind me of the things we do to each other.
 
ruben said:
In a sinful attitude I will depart from my good habits and address just the formal and external here, the pictures as forms and compositions of a far historycal cathastrophe.

Surprisingly within the set, I have been most attracted by the color images, instinctively, as more "real". Wasn't one supposed to react in the opposite way ?

Cheers,
Ruben
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Ruben,
I think you are right that to be in color is more real as obviously this is how the world is and was back then, however whilst walking around on a clear blue sky day it all kind of felt unemotional, difficult to describe. When in b&w, for me anyway, it conveys more how I think it should look if that makes sense. Maybe it's because most of the films and photos we all see regarding these events are in b&w and to give them color somehow takes something away from what happened, I don't know,
regards john
 
I’ve been working on a Corfu “project” for a while, and last summer I was wandering round a part derelict Jewish cemetery there, I was surprised to find it had been almost unused since 1944. that was when the island's Jews were removed to Auschwitz, all perished but for a hundred or so hidden by the local Greeks and about sixty who survived the camp.
 
Oddly, I found all of those photos, except the very last, to reduce the monumentality of the concentration camp horrors to banality: it all looks so benign and normal. Especially so for the color shots with the cheery sun and green grass.

Having read Primo Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz" (which should be required reading for every adult human on the planet) and other first hand accounts, the photos here, while nice enough, do not really evoke the horror or the importance of what went on there. The last shot is different to me: the open gates with the slight mist and the guard tower standing ominously in the distance all combine to evoke a very different response from me than the others.

Living here in the SF Bay Area, I've made several trips to Alcatraz over the years and I am quite sympathetic to the difficulty of capturing the sense of ominousness of a somber, sobering place -- my photos of Alcatraz were pretty terrible and were dustbinned immediately. So, I'm not trying to be mean-spirited, just giving my honest reaction. 🙂
 
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