Nazis can be seen sunbathing, eating blueberries, and setting up Christmas trees in photographs taken at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during its most deadly time, June 1944 to January 1945, when 400,000 Hungarian Jews were slaughtered.
The album was created by Obersturmführer Karl Höcker, the military administrative assistant to Richard Baer, the final commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and was given to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in 2007.
Rudolf Höss, Josef Kramer, Franz Hössler, and Dr. Josef Mengele are among the other documented SS camp officers visible in the photos; these are the only known depictions of some of these men.
The largest camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, commonly referred to as Auschwitz II, was created by the Germans in the Polish hamlet of Brzezinka in 1941.
In 1944, it housed almost 90,000 captives, and as the majority of the mass execution chambers were constructed there, the majority of Jews were slaughtered there.
The album’s compiler, Karl Höcker, became a member of the SS in 1933, of the Nazi Party in 1937, and began working at Auschwitz in May 1944, where he oversaw the execution of 430,000 Hungarian Jews.
The images he took depict Nazi officers, their families, and fellow officers socialising, dining, lounging in the sun, and playing concertinas at the death centre.
The photos of the Yule tree lighting and the hunting excursion were taken in January, just two weeks before the SS started clearing the camp.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops freed the last remaining captives.
A large number of the images were shot at the SS vacation spot Solahütte, which is located approximately 30 kilometres from Auschwitz and was designed for Nazi officers, guards, and administrative assistants to use on their days off from the concentration camp.
They (the Nazis) don’t appear wicked; they’re smiling, museum archivist Rebecca Erbelding said to the Washington Post after realising the significance of the images.
They are having doggie fun. They have a similar appearance to a neighbour you may know. And, yes, that is true—humans do possess this ability.
Höcker was taken prisoner by British forces after Dora-Mittelbau surrendered in April 1945, but he was freed in 1946 since it was unknown that he was an SS officer.
He was ultimately given a seven-year prison term for complicity in the murder of at least 1,000 people, as well as an additional four-year sentence in 1989 for complicity in a triple murder that killed 20 people at a time.
After being freed from prison in October 1992 and visiting his family in Lübbecke, Höcker passed away on January 30, 2000.
Moisés Kaufman, an American stage director and the son of Holocaust survivors, was also made aware of the images, which spurred him to create the play Here There Are Blueberries.
On August 21, 2022, La Jolla Playhouse in South California will host the world premiere of the 90-minute play.
Kaufman considered it necessary to address the idea that the Holocaust perpetrators were so normal and were participating in holidays and dinners together.
The album shows the daily activities of SS soldiers, including as social gatherings, as well as documentation of official visits and ceremonies.
The earliest images date to June 1944 and depict notable figures such as SS Obergruppenführers Oswald Pohl and Ernst-Heinrich Schmauser as well as Luftwaffe General Erich Quade visiting the camp to check on construction.
On July 22, 1944, photographs taken in late July show a gathering in Rudolph Höss’ honour and a day trip for SS Helferinnen (young SS women who served as communications specialists).
Another picture, shot in mid-September, shows the SS-Lazarette (troop hospital) at Birkenau’s entrance.
Five members of the SS were killed when the Allies destroyed the Lazarette on December 26, 1944; their funeral is also depicted in the album.
The album’s donor was a former soldier in the US Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps.
They came across the record in a Frankfurt, Germany apartment in 1945 and donated it on January 16, 2007.
The collection contained 116 pictures of guards, commandants, secretaries, and members of the SS.