German Forces

Down by the Birch Wood (1)

J-C Pressac/David Szmulewski (original author probably murdered)

Many of us will have seen some version of this photograph. A bewildering number of variants - not retouches, variants - appear in a considerable number of publications and websites. I only recently discovered the reason for these variants; the general practice has been to crop and enlarge the image to show only the "interesting" part; in consequence, the published images may vary considerably, particularly as regards the degree of cropping. This is the original image. The image is of the burning of gassed corpses in a cremation pit close to Crematorium V at Birkenau. The author was not in an ideal position to take a good shot - he was in the dressing room/mortuary of the Crematorium, which had previously contained these bodies, shooting through one of the doors of the building with a small camera. The camera had been supplied to members of the Sonderkommando assisting at the execution by the Camp's Polish Resistance on the request of the former. The Sonderkommando members wanted to record, as far as possible, the sort of "special actions" in which they were compelled to take part. On this Summer's day in 1944, David Szmulewski, a prisoner and Polish resistant, was repairing the Crematorium roof, and passed the little camera to a member of the Sonderkommando, who managed to take 4 photographs, of which this is one. The fact that the door "frames" this 'photo has allowed the location to be identified precisely by reference to Crematorium V. 50 years later, the birch forest from which the place got its name could still be seen, as here, beyond the fence; at that time, some of the trees still bore the marks of their proximity to cremations such as this. The original versions of these images was published by Jean-Claude Pressac in his monumental (500 page+) book, "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, published in 1989. Pressac was a French chemist and pharmacist who started out as a Holocaust denier. However, following many visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, he was fully convinced of the awful truth about the facility. The full text of the above book is available at http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/ I must admit I have only ever read parts of it; but what I have read certainly convinces. It is worth a look; again, perhaps not for those of weak constitution. Best regards, JR.