Wilhelm Brasse
Encyclopedia
Wilhelm Brasse is a Pole of Mixed Austrian-Polish descent who became known as the "famous photographer of Auschwitz
"; his life and work are the subject of the 2005 Polish television documentary film The Portraitist
(Potrecista), which first aired in the "Proud to Present" series on the Polish TVP1 on January 1, 2006.
After the 1939 German invasion of Poland
and occupation of Żywiec
, Brasse's hometown in southern Poland, he was interrogated by the Schutzstaffel
(SS), refused to swear allegiance to Hitler
, and was imprisoned for three months. After his release, still refusing to capitulate to the Volksliste
and forced membership of German Army, he tired to escape to Hungary and join the Polish Amry in France but was captured, along with other young men, at the Polish–Hungarian border and deported to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau as prisoner number 3444. Trained before the beginning of World War II as a portrait photographer at his aunt's studio in Katowice
,he was ordered by his SS supervisors to photograph "prisoners' work, criminal medical experiments, [and] portraits of the prisoners for the files." Brasse has estimated that he took 40,000 to 50,000 "identity pictures" from 1940 until 1945, before being moved to another concentration camp in Austria, where he was liberated by the American forces in May 1945.
While most of Brasse's photographs did not survive, some are on display in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and at Yad Vashem
, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Israel
's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust
. His photographs inspired Painting Czesława Kwoka (2007), which won a literary award.
After the September 1939 invasion of Poland
, he was pressured by the Nazis
to join them, refused, was repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo
, and tried to escape to France via Hungary, but he was captured at the Polish-Hungarian border and incarcerated for four months. After continuing to refuse to "declare his loyalty to Hitler", on 31 August 1940, soon after it opened, he was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp.
In February 1941, after having been called to the office of Rudolf Höß
, Auschwitz's commander, along with four others, and tested for "photographic skills", he was selected specifically for his "laboratory skills" and "technical ability with a camera" and for his ability to speak German, and then ordered to document the Nazi prisoners in the camp in the "Erkennungsdienst, the photographic identification unit." A year and a half later, Brasse encountered Josef Mengele
, the notorious Nazi doctor who "liked" his photographs and wanted him to photograph some of the twins and people with congenital disorder
s moved to his infirmary on whom Mengele was "experiment
ing". After the Soviets
entered Poland, during the Vistula-Oder Offensive
, from 12 January to 2 February 1945, along with thousands of other Auschwitz prisoners, Brasse was forcibly moved to Austria, to the concentration camp in Ebensee
, a subcamp of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex
(the last remaining in the area still controlled by the Nazis), where he remained imprisoned until the American forces liberated him in early May 1945.
After returning home to Żywiec, a "few miles from" KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, Brasse tried to start "taking pictures again", but, traumatized, he found himself haunted by the "ghosts" of the "dead"—the subjects of his hundreds of thousands of Auschwitz pictures—and unable to resume his work as a portrait photographer, he ultimately established what would become a "moderately prosperous" sausage casing
business.
Although he has gone back to the State Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau, "to talk with visitors about his experiences", and although he still possesses a "small pre-war Kodak
" camera, he will "never take another photograph."
Married, with two children and five grandchildren, Brasse lives with his wife in Żywiec.
Dr. Mengele had insisted that Brasse take the "identity" portraits of Auschwitz prisoners "in three poses: from the front and from each side." After taking hundreds of thousands of such photographs, Brasse and others disobeyed later Nazi orders to destroy them, yet only some of his photos have survived:
Some photographs credited to Brasse are in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum's permanent exhibit in Block no. 6: Exhibition: The Life of the Prisoners. All visitors to the Museum are asked explicitly to respect the Site of the Death Camp and not to use cameras (both still and video) in its indoor exhibits.
Similar individual "identification photographs" or "mug shots" of prisoners of Auschwitz and other German concentration camps are accessible in the searchable online Photo Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
(USHMM). Partially featured on the USHMM official Website is a photograph of the photo mural on a wall of its 3rd floor permanent exhibit. A photograph of an adult female Auschwitz inmate by Wilhelm Brasse is accessible from the USHMM Photo Archives. The USHMM official Website also features similar "identification photographs" credited to the "National Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum" (the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland), but without identifying the photographer (who may or may not be Brasse), as illustrations in "Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich".
This 52-minute Polish documentary film
about his life and work, entitled The Portraitist (Portrecista, Poland, 2005), directed by Irek Dobrowolski, and produced by Anna Dobrowolska, was first shown on Polish television station TVP1 on 1 January 2006, in the "Proud to present" series, and it premiered at West London Synagogue
, in London, on March 19, 2007, with a second screening by popular demand, on 22 April 2007. In the film Brasse relates the "story behind some pictures in the Auschwitz museum archives that he remembers taking."
As the synopsis for the film emphasizes, after taking thousands of photographs from 1940 until 1945, and, with "courage and skill", documenting "cruelty which goes beyond all words ... for future generations", Brasse "could not continue with his profession...."
Fergal Keane concurs that "Brasse has left us with a powerful legacy in images. Because of them we can see the victims of the Holocaust as human and not statistics. ... The photographs are the work of a man who fought to keep his humanity alive in a place of unimaginable evil."
, from June 1 to July 1, 2007, as part of the exhibition Words & Images: A Collaboration. According to the artists' exhibition catalogue statement, it "brings Czeslawa's image and voice into our lives," thus memorializing Kwoka and all child victims of the Holocaust, as well as others who lost their lives as a result of war. After being featured in the online journal AdmitTwo, in September 2007, it received the 2007 Tacenda Literary Award for Best Collaboration, from BleakHouse Publishing.
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
"; his life and work are the subject of the 2005 Polish television documentary film The Portraitist
The Portraitist
The Portraitist is a 2005 Polish television documentary film about the life and work of Wilhelm Brasse, the famous "photographer of Auschwitz", made for TVP1, Poland, which first aired in its "Proud to Present" series on January 1, 2006...
(Potrecista), which first aired in the "Proud to Present" series on the Polish TVP1 on January 1, 2006.
After the 1939 German invasion of Poland
Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...
and occupation of Żywiec
Zywiec
Żywiec is a town in south-central Poland with 32,242 inhabitants . Between 1975 and 1998, it was located within the Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship, but has since become part of the Silesian Voivodeship....
, Brasse's hometown in southern Poland, he was interrogated by the Schutzstaffel
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
(SS), refused to swear allegiance to Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, and was imprisoned for three months. After his release, still refusing to capitulate to the Volksliste
Volksliste
The Deutsche Volksliste was a Nazi institution whose purpose was the classification of inhabitants of German occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria systematized by Heinrich Himmler. The institution was first established in occupied western Poland...
and forced membership of German Army, he tired to escape to Hungary and join the Polish Amry in France but was captured, along with other young men, at the Polish–Hungarian border and deported to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau as prisoner number 3444. Trained before the beginning of World War II as a portrait photographer at his aunt's studio in Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...
,he was ordered by his SS supervisors to photograph "prisoners' work, criminal medical experiments, [and] portraits of the prisoners for the files." Brasse has estimated that he took 40,000 to 50,000 "identity pictures" from 1940 until 1945, before being moved to another concentration camp in Austria, where he was liberated by the American forces in May 1945.
While most of Brasse's photographs did not survive, some are on display in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and at Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. His photographs inspired Painting Czesława Kwoka (2007), which won a literary award.
Personal history
Descended from Austrian colonists, Wilhelm Brasse was born to a German Alsatian father and a Polish mother in Żywiec, Poland, on 3 December 1917., Wilhelm Brasse was "trained as a portrait photographer in a studio owned by his aunt", in Katowice, Poland, and "had an eye for the telling image and an ability to put his subjects at ease."After the September 1939 invasion of Poland
Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...
, he was pressured by the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
to join them, refused, was repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
, and tried to escape to France via Hungary, but he was captured at the Polish-Hungarian border and incarcerated for four months. After continuing to refuse to "declare his loyalty to Hitler", on 31 August 1940, soon after it opened, he was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp.
In February 1941, after having been called to the office of Rudolf Höß
Rudolf Höß
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was an SS-Obersturmbannführer , and from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, where it is estimated that more than a million people were murdered...
, Auschwitz's commander, along with four others, and tested for "photographic skills", he was selected specifically for his "laboratory skills" and "technical ability with a camera" and for his ability to speak German, and then ordered to document the Nazi prisoners in the camp in the "Erkennungsdienst, the photographic identification unit." A year and a half later, Brasse encountered Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...
, the notorious Nazi doctor who "liked" his photographs and wanted him to photograph some of the twins and people with congenital disorder
Congenital disorder
A congenital disorder, or congenital disease, is a condition existing at birth and often before birth, or that develops during the first month of life , regardless of causation...
s moved to his infirmary on whom Mengele was "experiment
Experiment
An experiment is a methodical procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. Experiments vary greatly in their goal and scale, but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results...
ing". After the Soviets
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
entered Poland, during the Vistula-Oder Offensive
Vistula-Oder Offensive
The Vistula–Oder Offensive was a successful Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in the European Theatre of World War II; it took place between 12 January and 2 February 1945...
, from 12 January to 2 February 1945, along with thousands of other Auschwitz prisoners, Brasse was forcibly moved to Austria, to the concentration camp in Ebensee
Ebensee
Ebensee is a market town in the Traunviertel region of the Austrian state of Upper Austria, located within the Salzkammergut Mountains at the southern end of the Traunsee. The regional capital Linz lies approximately to the north, nearest towns are Gmunden and Bad Ischl...
, a subcamp of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...
(the last remaining in the area still controlled by the Nazis), where he remained imprisoned until the American forces liberated him in early May 1945.
After returning home to Żywiec, a "few miles from" KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, Brasse tried to start "taking pictures again", but, traumatized, he found himself haunted by the "ghosts" of the "dead"—the subjects of his hundreds of thousands of Auschwitz pictures—and unable to resume his work as a portrait photographer, he ultimately established what would become a "moderately prosperous" sausage casing
Casing (sausage)
Casing, sausage casing, or sausage skin is the material that encloses the filling of a sausage. Casings are divided into two categories, natural and artificial...
business.
Although he has gone back to the State Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau, "to talk with visitors about his experiences", and although he still possesses a "small pre-war Kodak
Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....
" camera, he will "never take another photograph."
Married, with two children and five grandchildren, Brasse lives with his wife in Żywiec.
The Auschwitz photographs
Trained before the beginning of World War II as a portrait photographer at his aunt's studio, he was ordered by his SS supervisors to photograph "prisoners' work, criminal medical experiments, [and] portraits of the prisoners for the files." Brasse has estimated that he took about 40,000 to 50,000 "identity pictures" from 1940 until 1945, before being forcibly moved to another concentration camp in Austria, where he was liberated by the American forces in early May 1945.Dr. Mengele had insisted that Brasse take the "identity" portraits of Auschwitz prisoners "in three poses: from the front and from each side." After taking hundreds of thousands of such photographs, Brasse and others disobeyed later Nazi orders to destroy them, yet only some of his photos have survived:
although it is hard to say which were Brasse's, since camp photos as a rule didn't carry the photographer's name[,] ... Jarosław Mensfelt, spokesman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, says some 200,000 such pictures were taken, with name, nationality and profession attached. ... About 40,000 of these pictures are preserved, some with the identification cards, and 2,000 of these are on display in the museum.... others are at Yad VashemYad VashemYad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
, the Israeli Holocaust memorial.
Some photographs credited to Brasse are in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum's permanent exhibit in Block no. 6: Exhibition: The Life of the Prisoners. All visitors to the Museum are asked explicitly to respect the Site of the Death Camp and not to use cameras (both still and video) in its indoor exhibits.
Similar individual "identification photographs" or "mug shots" of prisoners of Auschwitz and other German concentration camps are accessible in the searchable online Photo Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...
(USHMM). Partially featured on the USHMM official Website is a photograph of the photo mural on a wall of its 3rd floor permanent exhibit. A photograph of an adult female Auschwitz inmate by Wilhelm Brasse is accessible from the USHMM Photo Archives. The USHMM official Website also features similar "identification photographs" credited to the "National Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum" (the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland), but without identifying the photographer (who may or may not be Brasse), as illustrations in "Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich".
Documentary film: The Portraitist
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about his life and work, entitled The Portraitist (Portrecista, Poland, 2005), directed by Irek Dobrowolski, and produced by Anna Dobrowolska, was first shown on Polish television station TVP1 on 1 January 2006, in the "Proud to present" series, and it premiered at West London Synagogue
West London Synagogue
The West London Synagogue of British Jews was established on 15 April 1840. It is one of the oldest synagogues in the United Kingdom and the oldest Reform synagogue in the UK.-History:...
, in London, on March 19, 2007, with a second screening by popular demand, on 22 April 2007. In the film Brasse relates the "story behind some pictures in the Auschwitz museum archives that he remembers taking."
As the synopsis for the film emphasizes, after taking thousands of photographs from 1940 until 1945, and, with "courage and skill", documenting "cruelty which goes beyond all words ... for future generations", Brasse "could not continue with his profession...."
Fergal Keane concurs that "Brasse has left us with a powerful legacy in images. Because of them we can see the victims of the Holocaust as human and not statistics. ... The photographs are the work of a man who fought to keep his humanity alive in a place of unimaginable evil."
Work of art based on Brasse's photographs
Among Brasse's photographs of children concentration-camp prisoners exhibited in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, in Poland, "identity pictures" of Czesława Kwoka attributed to him inspired a collaborative mixed-media artwork entitled Painting Czesława Kwoka, by Theresa Edwards (verse) and Lori Schreiner (art), which was displayed at the Windham Art Gallery in Brattleboro, VermontBrattleboro, Vermont
Brattleboro, originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located in the southeast corner of the state, along the state line with New Hampshire. The population was 12,046 at the 2010 census...
, from June 1 to July 1, 2007, as part of the exhibition Words & Images: A Collaboration. According to the artists' exhibition catalogue statement, it "brings Czeslawa's image and voice into our lives," thus memorializing Kwoka and all child victims of the Holocaust, as well as others who lost their lives as a result of war. After being featured in the online journal AdmitTwo, in September 2007, it received the 2007 Tacenda Literary Award for Best Collaboration, from BleakHouse Publishing.
Filmography
- Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State (BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, 2005), "Surprising Beginnings" and "Orders & Initiatives" (Episodes 1 & 2) ["Auschwitz: 1940–1945"]. - The Portraitist (Portrecista, TVP1, Poland, 2005). (Original language: Polish; English subtitles.)
See also
- Expulsion of Poles by GermanyExpulsion of Poles by GermanyThe Expulsion of Poles by Germany was a prolonged anti-Polish campaign of ethnic cleansing by violent and terror-inspiring means lasting nearly a century. It began with the concept of Pan-Germanism developed in early 19th century and continued in the racial policy of Nazi Germany asserting the...
- The HolocaustThe HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
- Kidnapping of Polish children by Nazi GermanyKidnapping of Polish children by Nazi GermanyKidnapping of Eastern European children by Nazi Germany , part of the Generalplan Ost , involved taking children from Eastern Europe and moving them to Nazi Germany for the purpose of Germanization, or conversion into Germans....
- Nazi crimes against ethnic PolesNazi crimes against ethnic PolesIn addition to about 2.9 million Polish Jews , about 2.8 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished during the course of the war...
External links
- Archives. United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumUnited States Holocaust Memorial MuseumThe United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...
(USHMM). (Description of all its archives, including: "A combined catalog of published materials available in the Museum's Library, and unpublished archival materials available in the Museum's Archives. The published materials include books, serials, videos, CDs and other media. The unpublished archival materials include microfilm and microfiche, paper collections, photographs, music, and video and audio tapes." Among "unpublished" photographs in the USHMM searchable online Photo Archives are some of Wilhelm Brasse's "identification photographs", featured online with identification of Brasse as the photographer, credit to the "National Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum", identification of individual donors, and/or USHMM copyright notices. Those who download any of its archived photographs are directed to write to the USHMM for terms and conditions of use.) - Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland. English version. (Includes Centre for Education About Auschwitz and the Holocaust.) Further reference: "Technical page", with credits and copyright notice, pertaining to the official Website and official publications of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
- "Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Publications: Albums, Catalogues". (English version; also available in Polish and German.)
- Photographs of Wilhelm Brasse on the occasion of "Ein Gespräch mit Erich Hackl, Wilhelm Brasse und Ireneusz Dobrowolski" ("An interview with Erich Hackl, Wilhelm Brasse and Ireneusz Dobrowolski"), moderated by Jacek St. Buras, about The Portraitist, October 10, 2006, featured in Deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur in Polen at kroki.pl (Reihe Schritte/Kroki). (Text and captions in German.)
- "Portraitist" ("Portrecista") – Official Webpage of Rekontrplan Film Group (Distributor). Adobe FlashAdobe FlashAdobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
content, including video clipVideo clipVideo clips are short clips of video, usually part of a longer recording. The term is also more loosely used to mean any short video less than the length of a traditional television program.- On the Internet :...
. (Access: >Productions>Documentaries>Portraitist). Television Documentary filmDocumentary filmDocumentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
produced for TVP1, "a television channel owned by TVP (Telewizja Polska S.A.)" [Updated "Events/News" re: screenings at Polish film festivals and awards also on site.] (English and Polish language options.) (Original language of film: Polish.) - "Portrecista" (2005) – Excerpts from the film, Portrecista, first broadcast on TVP1, Poland, on January 1, 2006, as posted on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, by "skarleee", on August 22, 2007. (In Polish; no subtitles; hyperlinked related Video clipVideo clipVideo clips are short clips of video, usually part of a longer recording. The term is also more loosely used to mean any short video less than the length of a traditional television program.- On the Internet :...
s.) (9:45). - "Resources & Collections: About the Photo Archive" at Yad VashemYad VashemYad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
.