The Auschwitz Photographer: The Forgotten Story of the WWII Prisoner Who Documented Thousands of Lost Souls

by Luca Crippa, Maurizio Onnis, Jennifer Higgins (Translator)

Overview

The Nazis asked him to swear allegiance to Hitler, betraying his country, his friends, and everything he believed in.

He refused.

Poland, 1939. Professional photographer Wilhelm Brasse is deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and finds himself in a deadly race to survive, assigned to work as the camp's intake photographer and take "identity pictures" of prisoners as they arrive by the trainload. Brasse soon discovers his photography skills are in demand from Nazi guards as well, who ask him to take personal portraits for them to send to their families and girlfriends. Behind the camera, Brasse is safe from the terrible fate that so many of his fellow prisoners meet. But over the course of five years, the horrifying scenes his lens capture, including inhumane medical "experiments" led by Josef Mengele, change Brasse forever.

Based on the true story of Wilhelm Brasse, The Auschwitz Photographer is a stark black-and-white reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust. This gripping work of World War II narrative nonfiction takes readers behind the barbed wire fences of the world's most feared concentration camp, bringing Brasse's story to life as he clicks the shutter button thousands of times before ultimately joining the Resistance, defying the Nazis, and defiantly setting down his camera for good.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728242217
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	215,257
File size:	5 MB

Table of Contents

Prologue Auschwitz: An Afternoon at the Identification Service ix

Part 1 Auschwitz, 1941: Hiding to Survive 1

Part 2 Auschwitz, 1942-43: Serving the Master 77

Part 3 Auschwitz, 1944-45: Rebellion and Testimony 227

Epilogue 307

A True Story 315

A Note on the Text 321

Reading Group Guide 325

Picture Acknowledgments 329

About the Authors and Translator 333

Editorial Reviews

06/28/2021

Historians Crippa and Onnis paint a cinematic portrait of Wilhelm Brasse, a political prisoner who took thousands of photographs of fellow inmates during his five-year incarceration at Auschwitz. Of Austrian and Polish descent, Brasse (1917–2012) worked as a teenager at his uncle’s photography studio. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he tried to escape to France to join the Free Polish Army, but was arrested and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where he was recruited to join the camp’s Identification Service. Though the Germans mainly wanted to make sure “they were murdering the right person,” Brasse spent hours retouching photos of the “living dead” in order to “present them to history with their dignity intact.” He also took portraits of S.S. officers and documented Josef Mengele’s medical experiments. In January 1945, as the Russians approached Auschwitz, Brasse refused orders to destroy the photographs; many are now on display at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Relying on a BBC documentary and other secondary sources, the authors recreate plenty of dramatic episodes, but Brasse’s interior world remains somewhat elusive throughout. Still, readers will be captivated by this unlikely story of survival and compassion under the cruelest of circumstances. Photos.(Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"[T]he authors provide another sharp reminder of the extent of Nazi evil, enhanced by the black-and-white photo insert…A moving story of one man’s endurance in the worst imaginable conditions." -Kirkus Reviews" — Kirkus Reviews

"A compelling story of a young man's desperate search for the humanity in the inhumanity of the world’s most notorious concentration camp." — Wendy Holden, author of Born Survivors

"Brasse has left us with a powerful legacy in images. Because of them we can see the victims of the Holocaust as humans and not statistics." — Fergal Keane, BBC correspondent

"This book by Luca Crippa and Maurizio Onnis allows readers to be engulfed in the world Wilhelm Brasse and his colleagues were facing. Feeling the anguish and despair but also the embers of hope, which would eventually light." — Seattle Book Review

"a cinematic portrait....readers will be captivated by this unlikely story of survival and compassion under the cruelest of circumstances." — Publishers Weekly" — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2021-06-25
A biography of Wilhelm Brasse (1917-2012), a Polish prisoner at Auschwitz who survived by becoming an official photographer for the Germans.

Translated from the Italian by Higgins, the book draws from a BBC interview with Brasse, interviews with his two children, and material in several Holocaust museums. Crippa and Onnis take a quasi-novelistic approach to their subject, presenting detailed descriptions and passages of dialogue evoked by Brasse’s stark photos of fellow prisoners and of the German guards and other prison staff, including the infamous camp doctor, Josef Mengele. At first, the authors suggest, Brasse was simply doing whatever it took to avoid being sent to the gas chambers. His photographic skill, honed before the war in his uncle’s studio, made him useful to the camp administration, who enlisted him to document the incoming prisoners. Brasse also ingratiated himself with the Nazis by taking or developing their personal photos and, at one point, by producing a run of cheery postcards to be sent to family members to show how pleasant camp duty was for the staff. Eventually, Brasse took the considerable risk of helping fellow prisoners carry out various forms of resistance, such as smuggling out evidence of the horrific conditions inside the camp. When news of the Russian advance through Poland arrived, he disobeyed his orders to destroy the photographic evidence, leaving it for the Russians to find when they liberated the camp. “A tide of memories broke over him in an instant,” write the authors of the moment he decided not to burn the photos. “Years of imprisonment and servitude passed before his eyes. There they all were, right in front of him. He realized he could tell the story behind every single picture, and this awareness filled him with an energy and resolve he’d never felt before.” The prose is functional yet unexceptional, but the authors provide another sharp reminder of the extent of Nazi evil, enhanced by the black-and-white photo insert.

A moving story of one man’s endurance in the worst imaginable conditions.

Kirkus Reviews