THE AUSCHWITZ PHOTOGRAPHER

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.