#august 1994

Disturbing, but important images.

The photographs were smuggled out of the camp and given to Polish resistance fighters to show the world what was happening and to give testimony about the extermination.   A note, accompanying the photos, dated September 4, 1944 was signed “Stakło”, a pseudonym for Polish prisoner and leading member of the camp resistance, Stanisław Kłodziński.   The note read: Urgent…Sending you snaps from Birkenau – gas poisoning action. These photos show one of the stakes at which bodies were burned, when the crematoria could not manage to burn all the bodies. The bodies in the foreground are waiting to be thrown into the fire.

Another picture shows one of the places in the forest, where people are undressing before ‘showering’ – as they were told – and then go to the gas-chambers…Send the enclosed photos to Tell – we think you should send the enlargements further on Sonderkommando member Alter Fajnzylberg gave his own account of how the pictures were taken: The text is available in the image

The images were taken within 15–30 minutes of each other by an inmate inside Auschwitz Birkenau, the extermination camp within the Auschwitz complex. Several sources identified the photographer as Alberto Errera, a Greek military officer whose code name was Alekos Alexandridis. The film was smuggled out of the camp by the Polish underground, hidden inside a tube of toothpaste by Helena Dantón, who worked in the SS canteen.

"Juicy" by The Notorious B.I.G.