Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence

Atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust were, for various reasons, photographed more intensely than any others atrocities, before or since. Deals with the origins of Holocaust photographs, as well as with their wartime and postwar use. Photographs were taken in ghettos, Nazi camps, and elsewhere, by all the protagonists of World War II, including the Nazis and their collaborators, the Jews themselves, resistance fighters, and the liberating Allied forces at the end of the war. During and after the war these photographs served various political agendas and were exploited for propaganda purposes. E.g., in the late 1940s-50s photographs of Nazi atrocities were largely ignored and suppressed in the West, while they were used in the anti-Western agenda of the Soviet bloc. Contends that, although Holocaust photographs could be of some value for historians as secondary sources, they have no value as educational tools or as representation of history. Calls for discontinuing the use of Holocaust photographs in public exhibitions and popular texts.