Leiden University Student Repository

Conti, Emilia (2023)

Geheimnisträger: The Bearers of Secrets: Four Photographs from Auschwitz to Imagine the Unimaginable

Bachelor thesis | Kunstgeschiedenis (BA)

In the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz a group of selected prisoners were forced to operate on a daily basis the gas chambers and crematoria of the camp: the members of the Sonderkommando were prisoners forced to kill and cremate other fellow inmates. In 1944 some members of the current Sonderkommando unit managed to secretly shoot four photographs showing their daily duties and smuggle them outside of the camp, in order to show to the rest of the world the hell on Earth that was the life inside of Auschwitz. This essay analyses these four images as essential elements in the context of the collective memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The focus is posed on the importance of exhibiting these photographs despite their characteristic of being “violence images”, and how crucial it is to exhibit them while maintaining their original narrative without compromising it or omitting some aspects.

Photography

Memory

Concentration camp

Sonderkommando

Holocaust

Author

Conti, Emilia

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Arts, Media and Society

Supervisors

Davis, L.B.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en