The Auschwitz Photographer

June 28, 2021
Historians Crippa and Onnis paint a cinematic portrait of Wilhelm Brasse, a political prisoner who took thousands of photographs of fellow inmates during his five-year incarceration at Auschwitz. Of Austrian and Polish descent, Brasse (1917–2012) worked as a teenager at his uncle’s photography studio. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he tried to escape to France to join the Free Polish Army, but was arrested and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where he was recruited to join the camp’s Identification Service. Though the Germans mainly wanted to make sure “they were murdering the right person,” Brasse spent hours retouching photos of the “living dead” in order to “present them to history with their dignity intact.” He also took portraits of S.S. officers and documented Josef Mengele’s medical experiments. In January 1945, as the Russians approached Auschwitz, Brasse refused orders to destroy the photographs; many are now on display at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Relying on a BBC documentary and other secondary sources, the authors recreate plenty of dramatic episodes, but Brasse’s interior world remains somewhat elusive throughout. Still, readers will be captivated by this unlikely story of survival and compassion under the cruelest of circumstances. Photos.

September 1, 2021
Wilhelm Brasse was captured by the Germans escaping Poland in 1939 and was imprisoned in Auschwitz. He was recruited by the Nazis to photograph inmates, SS officers, and medical experiments by Josef Mengele. In 1945, as the Russians were closing in, he was asked to destroy some 40-50,000 photos. He bravely did not, and many still survive today as a remembrance of this horrific time. Brasse survived Auschwitz and this book brings his story to life, as well as those he photographed, like the only inmate wedding at the camp, or the female Nazi who committed suicide shortly after she asked him to take a salacious portrait. The account of his life at the camp is written like historical fiction that in no way diminishes the reality of life there as brutal and tragic as it was. It is powerful and difficult reading but essential to understand how hatred and bigotry metamorphosized so easily for some into mass murder of innocent men, women, and children. For readers looking for nonfiction that reads like fiction.

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July 15, 2021
A biography of Wilhelm Brasse (1917-2012), a Polish prisoner at Auschwitz who survived by becoming an official photographer for the Germans. Translated from the Italian by Higgins, the book draws from a BBC interview with Brasse, interviews with his two children, and material in several Holocaust museums. Crippa and Onnis take a quasi-novelistic approach to their subject, presenting detailed descriptions and passages of dialogue evoked by Brasse's stark photos of fellow prisoners and of the German guards and other prison staff, including the infamous camp doctor, Josef Mengele. At first, the authors suggest, Brasse was simply doing whatever it took to avoid being sent to the gas chambers. His photographic skill, honed before the war in his uncle's studio, made him useful to the camp administration, who enlisted him to document the incoming prisoners. Brasse also ingratiated himself with the Nazis by taking or developing their personal photos and, at one point, by producing a run of cheery postcards to be sent to family members to show how pleasant camp duty was for the staff. Eventually, Brasse took the considerable risk of helping fellow prisoners carry out various forms of resistance, such as smuggling out evidence of the horrific conditions inside the camp. When news of the Russian advance through Poland arrived, he disobeyed his orders to destroy the photographic evidence, leaving it for the Russians to find when they liberated the camp. "A tide of memories broke over him in an instant," write the authors of the moment he decided not to burn the photos. "Years of imprisonment and servitude passed before his eyes. There they all were, right in front of him. He realized he could tell the story behind every single picture, and this awareness filled him with an energy and resolve he'd never felt before." The prose is functional yet unexceptional, but the authors provide another sharp reminder of the extent of Nazi evil, enhanced by the black-and-white photo insert. A moving story of one man's endurance in the worst imaginable conditions.

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