The sad, human side of the SS
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
PHOTO CAPTION: Karl Höcker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz, and SS auxiliaries relaxing at a recreation lodge near the camp.
Last December the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was given a photo album by a former United States Army intelligence officer.
This album was only 16 pages long, but it held photos that showed a side of the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz, that the public doesn't see.
Celebrating.
Check out the video album set up at the New York Times. It's amazing:
For example, one of the Höcker pictures, shot on July 22, 1944, shows a group of cheerful young women who worked as SS communications specialists eating bowls of fresh blueberries. One turns her bowl upside down and makes a mock frown because she has finished her portion.On that day, said Judith Cohen, a historian at the Holocaust museum in Washington, 150 new prisoners arrived at the Birkenau site. Of that group, 21 men and 12 women were selected for work, the rest transported immediately to the gas chambers. By Neil A. Lewis/NYT