“Seeing Auschwitz” - How should we view the Holocaust?
By Katie Light, Third-Year History
What are our intentions for going to Holocaust memorials and exhibits? How are we viewing Holocaust photography, and more importantly, how should we be viewing these photos? The exhibiting and photography of the Holocaust continues to be contentious issue. In her article, Katie explores the role of photography in Holocaust memorialisation, spotlighting the recent ‘Seeing Auschwitz’ exhibition in her research.
The ‘Seeing Auschwitz’ exhibition opened in October 2022 in London. This exhibition was curated by Paul Salmons, one of the world’s leading experts on the Holocaust. The general layout of the exhibition is simple and is accompanied by an audio track. The exhibition’s central concept aims to question how we view these photos, with the viewer encouraged to photograph the exhibition themselves. At the end of your visit, you are asked which three images would you share with others and why? They also ask you to use the hashtag ‘Seeing Auschwitz’, to share these images on social media. But, is this way of viewing the Holocaust productive, or even helpful to our memorialisation?
Photography became a mass phenomenon in the twentieth century and there are an estimated two million photos of the Holocaust. These photographs initially acted as evidence of what had taken place during the Nuremberg Trials and to combat Holocaust deniers. Decades after, has the true impact of Holocaust photography been lost? Have we become immune to these photos and are we experiencing, as visual historian Barbie Zelizer argues, a ‘compassion fatigue’? Additionally, historian Susan Crane argues that we should no longer look at images of atrocity, as this seeks to reconstruct the perpetrator’s gaze. Crane believes that by looking at atrocity photos, we become desensitised to atrocity, and therefore we should not be looking.
However, does this historiography deserve a new approach in light of the ‘Seeing Auschwitz’ exhibition? Can it lead us to disrupt the perpetrator's gaze? For example, the ‘Seeing Auschwitz’ exhibit begins with a large photo of arrivals at Auschwitz-Birkenau. These photographs are explained as ‘vital evidence’, but also ‘pose a challenge for the viewer’. It immediately makes the viewer aware of the perpetrator’s gaze and its dangers but enforces how important context is.
Rather than believing, as Crane did, that we should not look at these images entirely, the exhibit takes a different route. They write that we have a choice, as we can either see them as the mass of humans, as the Nazis saw them, or we can focus on things that were not intended to be captured. This is presented by the Auschwitz Album, which is a collection of around 200 photographs, taken by SS men. It was discovered in 1945 and includes only photographs of arrival and selection for the gas chambers. These have been used as evidence in post-war trials and used in museum exhibitions. Due to the scarcity of photographs of what happened at Auschwitz, we rely on these images, which ‘force’ us to share the perpetrator's gaze. However, ‘Seeing Auschwitz’ argues that we need to look more closely, rather than choosing to not use them. The exhibit notes that ‘the camera captures more than he intends’, which allows us to look beyond the perpetrator's gaze. The perpetrator’s gaze saw them as a ‘passive mass’ but looking deeper shows them as individuals.
Individuality is essential to Holocaust studies, as there is a danger of focusing simply on the statistic of six million men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust. This leads to us forgetting that they were ordinary people. If we see victims of the Holocaust as numbers, we forget that they were individual people from all different backgrounds. In one of the selected photographs, the exhibition zooms in on a young boy wearing an oversized coat. This young boy is Henryk Naftotli Herz Adler, who ‘returns the camera’s gaze’ through his appearance. His kippah, which is a hat traditionally worn by Jewish males, covering his head speaks to his religion and acts as a symbol of defiance against the Nazis. Additionally, Adler covered his face with a scarf, continuing to assert his identity. Examples such as these are vital for looking beyond the perpetrator’s gaze, and show why we should continue to treat these photos critically.
The curator, Salmons, argued that these images are not ‘neutral sources’ and that ‘it is necessary to stop and analyse them to really see what each image truly reveals, not only about the place and the moment, but also about their authors, the people portrayed, and even about ourselves as viewers’.
The Nazis never intended for their photographs to record the power of individuals. Crane even mentions this in her work but does not explore it deeper. Removing the perpetrator’s gaze has also been attempted before by the Allied Signal Corps photographers, who used these images as evidence of Nazi criminality. Therefore, it is not new to try to change how we view these images. Nazis did not expect this gaze to be returned and so this is what must be done. To not look deeper into the photos, allows for a deeper re-violencing, as we are agreeing that there is no agency and that the gaze cannot be returned.
Through looking at images of the Holocaust we can look deeper into people’s individuality, which ties well to the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day 2023, ‘Ordinary People’. We need to look at victims as ordinary people, such as Henryk Naftotli Herz Adler, in order to humanise the Holocaust. Focusing on individuals of the Holocaust as ordinary people prompts us to think about how ordinary people can play a bigger part. We are all ordinary people, like Adler, who can be extraordinary in our actions, whether this is standing against prejudice, racism, antisemitism or hatred, we all have the ability to play a bigger part.
To learn more about the Seeing Auschwitz exhibition, you can visit their website here. The exhibition continues until 25th March 2023.