The Shoah Memorial devotes an exhibition to photos taken in Auschwitz by the Nazis

« Show what we don’t see when it’s under our nose . ” Nearly 200 photographs of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp are exhibited from Thursday, January 23 at the Shoah Memorial in Paris for ” Analyze images “Taken by the Nazis. The exhibition « How the Nazis photographed their crimes, Auschwitz 1944 »revolves around the 197 shots of the ” Album d’auschwitz », A collection of photographs taken in 1944 and documenting the arrival of the Jews of Hungary in Birkenau.

On these black and white shots, women set the goal, the elderly are seated exhausted near a wagon, groups await the ” selection Between people suitable for work and sentenced to the gas chamber. “” These photos, you necessarily crossed them, they are iconic », Underlines the historian Tal Bruttmann, curator of the exhibition. With this analysis work, it is a question of helping to ” read images » pour « Show what we don’t see when it’s under our nose ».

Preserved at the Yad Vashem Memorial, the shots were taken by two Nazi photographers on the orders of Rudolf Höss, the commander of this camp where a million Jews were murdered, ” To illustrate his know-how “Explains the historian. But the photographs of what was designed as an administrative report ” show that these victims have an attitude that photographers do not wait. They resist, they are worthy while they are conceived as anti -Semitic images ».

Shots that reveal violence

With explanatory boxes and audios explanations, the exhibition attracts the visitor’s attention to both tiny and obvious details. In a photo, two women block their noses, testifying to the pestilential smell of the nearby gas chambers. On another, a woman draws her tongue, in an unnoticed challenge of the photographer. Even if the photographer tries to erase violence, a multitude of clues reveal it: so this SS, in a corner of a photo taken at the time of the selection, which gives a cane to two young women.

The canes themselves bear witness to the violence of the assassination, since some come from “You haveWhere were stolen effects stolen from deportees. Another example, the presence of bodyguard, which shows that the selection does not necessarily happen in order, or the interaction, despite the ban, between a deportee working in Kanada and an arrival – perhaps for the encourage lying on your age? A large camp map also makes it possible to locate exactly where each of the photos has been taken.

Tal Bruttmann had already, with the Germans Stefan Hördler and Christoph Kreutzmüller, published in 2023 an analysis of these photographs in a work entitled “An Auschwitz album: how the Nazis photographed their crimes». With this exhibition it is also ” Take other sons, not present in the book », et « especially what we know from the outside ». Car « We are not in an isolated place. There is a considerable rail traffic around the city. The place is not unknown “, Underlines the historian. Whether by the presence of workers from the outside, the train smoke going in the background, several photos suggest ” How much there is a porosity between the site and the city, normal life He adds.