'Auschwitz photographer' book launched
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
21.11.2013 11:01
Wilhelm Brasse, a Polish photographer who was ordered to take thousands of portraits at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps is the focus of a new book.
The book launch of 'Photographer from Auschwitz.' Photo: PAP/Bartlomiej Zborowski
Brasse, who was of Austrian and Polish descent, was imprisoned at Auschwitz in April 1940, after being caught attempting to flee the Nazi-occupied country.
He had refused to sign the so-called Volksliste papers, which would have granted him superior treatment on account of his partial Austrian ancestry.
Anna Dobrowolska, who made a documentary film about Brasse in 2005, launched her book Photographer from Auschwitz (Fotograf z Auschwitz) in Warsaw on Wednesday.
“He was an extraordinary witness to the Holocaust,” she said.
Besides images, the current book draws on close to 20 hours of interviews which the author conducted with Brasse, who died in 2012.
On account of his training as a photographer Brasse, had been called on to photograph thousands of camp inmates, including children that the notorious medic Dr Josef Mengele experimented on.
Not all of Brasses images survived the war, but many are held by the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum. (nh/pg)
Source: PAP