Photographs are powerful, and that is why I have decided not to take any today.
On Wednesday, May 22nd, we visited the death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and walked through the various blocks and monuments. The first two blocks of Auschwitz-I we viewed contained various photographs of the camp. Our guide stressed to us no less than four times that prisoners could not take these pictures. They were not allowed to and did not have the equipment or means to do so. The SS took most of the photos of daily camp life on display. We saw only one photo illegally taken by a member of the Sonderkommando only addressed as Alex, who may have been Alberto Errera, a Jewish-Greek officer imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sonderkommando was the name given to units of camp prisoners (who were primarily Jewish) who were handpicked by German soldiers to do a variety of difficult and emotionally arduous tasks around the camps. Their primary task was to dispose of the bodies of the dead in the crematoriums. Because their work was both immensely strenuous and necessary for the death camps to operate, they had access to marginally better living conditions that allowed them to more easily smuggle in forbidden goods— goods like a camera.
The photograph, one in a series of four known as “the Sonderkommando photos,” was an act of protest. It documented the Nazis burning murdered bodies. It was later passed on to the Polish resistance. The photos stand in contrast to the less horrific photos of the SS, which, concerned with not leaving evidence of their crimes, were primarily of empty buildings or groups of people who had just disembarked from the train. The Sonderkommando photos are much less precise, owing to the secrecy in which they had to be taken, but fully display the true atrocities of the camp.
As such, even photographs taken today at Auschwitz-Birkenau hold a special meaning. Photos are technically allowed almost everywhere in the camps, but that does not change the significance of taking them. Unlike many of the prisoners at the time, the visitors of today now have the means to document the horror and the trauma stored within the camps. While recording and acknowledging the truth can be an act of resistance, it can also enforce the status quo. When visiting the camps and taking photos, it is integral to acknowledge that you possess a unique kind of power— one that the SS had but the prisoners did not. Taking a photograph today at Auschwitz-Birkenau is a privilege that should not be taken lightly.