The Other Side of Auschwitz: Nazis At Play

Last year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a scrapbook that once belonged to Karl Höcker--the adjutant to the camp commandant at Auschwitz. According to The New York Times, it had photos of the lives of Auschwitz’s senior SS officers, but

Rather than showing the men performing their death camp duties, the photos depicted, among other things, a horde of SS men singing cheerily to the accompaniment of an accordionist, Höcker lighting the camp’s Christmas tree, a cadre of young SS women frolicking and officers relaxing, some with tunics shed, for a smoking break.

In all there are 116 pictures, beginning with a photo from June 21, 1944, of Höcker and the commandant of the camp, Richard Baer, both in full SS regalia. The album also contains eight photos of Josef Mengele, the camp doctor notorious for participating in the selections of arriving prisoners and bizarre and cruel medical experiments. These are the first authenticated pictures of Mengele at Auschwitz, officials at the Holocaust museum said.

The New York Times article has a short video narrated by an archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, showing some of the photos--making a point about the banality of evil.

Something we have no shortage of today.

[Hat tip: Contentions]

Technorati Tag: Holocaust and USHMM and Karl Höcker.