Nazi's photo album shows life of a top Auschwitz officer

This is an updated mentation of a communicative archetypal published connected May 19, 2024. The archetypal video tin beryllium viewed here. 

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By the clip a caller play opened past outpouring off-Broadway by acclaimed writer and manager Moises Kaufman, it had already been nominated for a Pulitzer prize. It's based connected the existent communicative of a photograph medium from Auschwitz that was sent to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum successful Washington, DC successful 2007. Museum historians weren't definite what to marque of it astatine first, but the medium turned retired to beryllium the scrapbook of a Nazi - an SS serviceman - who helped tally the day-to-day operations of Auschwitz, wherever astir 1.1 cardinal people, mostly Jews, were murdered betwixt 1940 and 1945. As we archetypal reported past May, the medium doesn't amusement immoderate prisoners oregon state chambers, what it does amusement are immoderate of the astir notorious killers successful past seemingly enjoying themselves. That's what depository officials recovered truthful chilling, and what Moises Kaufman spent 14 years creating a play about.

Moises Kaufman: When I archetypal saw the photographs I got goosebumps, and I-- I retrieve thinking-- you know, s-- galore of the radical successful my household died successful Auschwitz. And these are the radical who were doing it. And they don't look to person immoderate remorse. Seeing that successful a photograph truthful intelligibly articulated is terrifying. This is terrifying due to the fact that they each look truthful overmuch similar us. 

The photographs whitethorn look unremarkable astatine archetypal - SS officers astatine meal parties drinking, socializing, flirting with their young Nazi secretaries - but erstwhile these pictures were taken, the Germans were losing the warfare and exterminating much Jews successful Auschwitz than astatine immoderate different clip successful the Holocaust. 

Several images amusement an SS serviceman giving his secretaries blueberries portion a antheral plays an accordion. The inscription reads: "here determination are blueberries." Moises Kaufman picked that for the rubric of his play. 

Moises Kaufman: I wanted the assemblage to person the acquisition that we had looking astatine the photographs.

Anderson Cooper: What was it astir the bid of the women eating blueberries that-- that truthful struck you?

Moises Kaufman: That they were just, you know, teenage girls who were secretaries. Everyone is showing the lensman their bare plates, there's 1 of the women who's unreal crying. So she's truthful bittersweet due to the fact that she's tally retired of blueberries and extracurricular of the frame, there's 1.1 cardinal radical who are being killed. So however bash you pb your regular beingness and astatine the aforesaid clip enactment successful 1 of the largest sidesplitting machines successful the past of mankind?

Moises Kaufman 60 Minutes

Kaufman's play is centered connected the depository historians who worked with survivors and adjacent descendants of Nazis themselves to uncover what the medium was. 

No 1 had ever seen images similar these before. There are fewer photos of Auschwitz due to the fact that the Nazis worked hard to conceal their crimes.

Kaufman's main quality is Rebecca Erbelding, a historiographer astatine the Holocaust museum, played by histrion Elizabeth Stahlmann.

The existent Rebecca Erbelding received the medium from a erstwhile U.S. counterintelligence officer. He said helium recovered it successful 1946 successful an abandoned flat successful war-torn Frankfurt portion hunting down Nazi warfare criminals. He donated it to the depository but wanted to stay anonymous. 

Anderson Cooper: How did you spell astir uncovering retired who made this?

Rebecca Erbelding: I didn't spot immoderate trains. I didn't spot thing I recognized. It was possibly the 3rd clip flipping done it, and that's erstwhile I saw Josef Mengele.

No pictures of Dr. Josef Mengele successful Auschwitz had ever been recovered before. To spot the album, we went to a precocious security, climate-controlled installation successful Maryland wherever the archetypal pages are stored. 

Anderson Cooper: That's Dr. Mengele.

Rebecca Erbelding: That's Mengele. And these are inactive the lone known photos of Mengele portion helium was stationed astatine the camp.

Mengele was known by prisoners astatine Auschwitz arsenic the "angel of death." He conducted gruesome aesculapian experiments, mostly connected children, and often stood connected the level erstwhile trains arrived, selecting who would beryllium sent to enactment and who would dice instantly successful state chambers.

Rebecca Erbelding: Not lone is it Mengele, these are immoderate of the astir infamous officers astatine the camp. So you spot there's Baer. 

Richard Baer is connected the album's archetypal page, helium was the past commandant of Auschwitz. That helped historians place his deputy, Karl Höcker. And it turned retired this was Höcker's idiosyncratic medium - his cherished memories down the scenes of a massacre.

Anderson Cooper: May 1944 is erstwhile Höcker got to Auschwitz.

Rebecca Erbelding: Yes. So this is the entirety of his clip astatine Auschwitz.

Before the warfare Höcker had been a struggling slope teller. Becoming an SS serviceman astatine Auschwitz was considered a large measurement up. 

Rebecca Erbelding and Anderson Cooper 60 Minutes

Rebecca Erbelding: He had been staffed astatine the Majdanek campy earlier this and truthful helium had acquisition with prisoners arriving, with selections, with state chambers. He signed receipts for Zyklon B, the lethal state that was utilized for sidesplitting people. He is simply a important cog successful the Nazi sidesplitting machine.

The 116 photos successful the medium amusement Auschwitz arsenic Karl Höcker wanted to retrieve it. 

Anderson Cooper: Wow.

Rebecca Erbelding: It's a premix of, like, candid things and truly official. This is his dog. His dog's sanction is "Favorit."

Anderson Cooper: I mean what's truthful stunning astir them is how–

Rebecca Erbelding: Normal.

Anderson Cooper: Yeah.

Rebecca Erbelding: Yea.

Anderson Cooper: I mean, who hasn't taken a photograph of them shaking their dog's hand?

Rebecca Erbelding: Uh-huh. So this is "Yule Fire 1944," which is–

Anderson Cooper: Wow.

Rebecca Erbelding: -- Nazi Christmas.

Rebecca Erbelding: They cognize that the Soviets are coming. They are not far. They tin astir apt perceive the bombs and here-- present they're lighting–

Anderson Cooper: And they're lighting a Christmas tree.

Rebecca Erbelding: Yeah.

The medium revealed thing other depository officials hadn't seen before. The Nazis built a abrogation edifice astatine Auschwitz. It was called Solahütte. These pictures amusement a gathering of apical SS officers determination successful July 1944. Rebecca Erbelding believes it was a enactment - they were congratulating themselves for successfully murdering much than 350,000 Hungarian Jews successful conscionable 55 days. 

Anderson Cooper: This looks similar they're singing.

Rebecca Erbelding: They are. This beforehand enactment is truly what the manager of the museum, Sara Bloomfield, calls the "chorus of criminals." So you person Höcker. You person Otto Moll, the caput of the state enclosure section. There's Rudolf Höss.

Anderson Cooper: The erstwhile commandant of Auschwitz.

Rebecca Erbelding: The erstwhile commandant of Auschwitz. Mengele is here.

Anderson Cooper: They're celebrating the-- the successful– 

Rebecca Erbelding: The palmy mass–

Anderson Cooper: --slaughter–

Rebecca Erbelding: --murder. Yeah.  

Irene Weiss: It was, idiosyncratic labeled it, a metropolis of death. And that's what it was. It worked similar an assembly enactment factory.

Irene Weiss 60 Minutes

Irene Weiss got to Auschwitz the time aft Karl Höcker started moving there. She arrived erstwhile she was 13, connected a bid packed with Jews from Hungary. Separated from her parents and 4 of her siblings, she says she recovered herself connected the level holding her younger sister Edith's manus arsenic they approached Dr. Mengele. 

Irene Weiss: And everything was successful a substance of seconds, you know, the instrumentality came down betwixt us. He held beingness and decease with that stick. All of a sudden, I was alone. 

She didn't cognize it astatine the time, but that infinitesimal was captured by a Nazi lensman documenting the accomplishment and processing of Hungarian Jews. It appears successful 1 of the lone different albums of Auschwitz. This photograph has been colorized. 

Irene Weiss: This is the radical already going to the state chamber.

Anderson Cooper: Wa-- wherever are you successful this picture?

Irene Weiss: Well, I americium close here

Anderson Cooper: This is you–

Irene Weiss: That's maine close here.

Anderson Cooper: So this is the infinitesimal aft you'd been separated from your small sister, Edith.

Irene Weiss: The precise moment, yes. That's what I'm looking at. I can't leave. I near her.

Irene Weiss ne'er saw Edith, her parents, oregon her brothers live again. What she has is this photo. That's her parent Leah sitting connected the crushed conscionable down her brothers Gershon and Reuben astatine Auschwitz. After this representation was taken, they were led into a state chamber. 

Irene Weiss: They had to termination the children truthful determination volition not beryllium a caller generation. And they discovered that if they besides killed the mothers, past they didn't person to interest astir the chaos that that would create, separating.

Anderson Cooper: The children wouldn't beryllium upset by being separated?

Irene Weiss: And the mothers wouldn't be-- wouldn't beryllium upset.

Weiss spent the adjacent 8 months moving extracurricular 1 of those state chambers. She sorted shoes and different belongings of the dead.

Irene Weiss: We saw these columns of women, mothers and children, and going into the doorway determination talking to us. And they're told they're walking into a bathhouse, you know? They're asking questions, "Where are you from?" And a fractional hr later, the chimney's belching fire. And that went connected time aft time and nighttime aft night. 

Anderson Cooper: So you saw thousands of women, children walking into state chambers?

Irene Weiss: Absolutely.

Anderson Cooper: And you talked to immoderate of them. In the past seconds of their life, minutes of their life.

Irene Weiss: Yes, but we couldn't cry. It was an astonishing thing. This is beyond crying. Tears are for mean pain. That benignant of brutality from chap mankind is truthful heavy that, you know, radical accidental breached heart. The bosom keeps working, but the psyche ne'er forgets.

Irene Weiss wasn't amazed by the photos successful Karl Höcker's album, but erstwhile they were released publicly, they made headlines astir the world. Tilman Taube work astir them online successful Germany portion connected his luncheon break.

Tilman Taube 60 Minutes

Tilman Taube: And determination was an article, "New photos from Auschwitz person appeared." I thought, "This is interesting."

When helium looked astatine the photos, helium was amazed to spot his gramps - Dr. Heinz Baumkotter. 

Tilman Taube: On the archetypal picture, it wasn't 100% clear. But past I flipped 2 much pictures. It was perfectly 100% wide that-- that was him.

Taube knew his gramps was caput doc astatine Sachsenhausen attraction camp, and had done aesculapian experiments connected prisoners and sent thousands to beryllium killed astatine different camps. But Taube wasn't definite wherefore his gramps had gone to Auschwitz.

He connected with Rebecca Erbelding and soon discovered conscionable however profoundly progressive his gramps was successful the Holocaust.

Anderson Cooper: When you spot the representation of your grandfather, I mean, does that consciousness similar your grandfather?

Tilman Taube: For me, strictly speaking, it's 2 antithetic persons. The gramps that I knew was a alternatively mean grandfather. And the SS serviceman is-- is simply a antithetic idiosyncratic for me.

Anderson Cooper: It's intolerable to reconcile the two.

Tilman Taube: It's difficult, difficult, really.

Taube present helps the depository hunt for much photos and documents by reaching retired to different descendants of Nazis.

Tilman Taube: Of course, you privation to beryllium portion of immoderate benignant of question that helps preventing things similar that from happening again.

Anderson Cooper: You cognize your gramps and you cognize what helium did. Does it marque you deliberation otherwise astir quality beings, what we are each susceptible of?

Tilman Taube: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

The play astir the Höcker medium by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, his co-writer and longtime collaborator, raises hard questions… not conscionable astir our past, but astir ourselves.

Anderson Cooper with Amanda Gronich and Moises Kaufman 60 Minutes

Amanda Gronich: When we look astatine these pictures, we're looking done the lens of however they saw what they were doing.

Anderson Cooper: Why is it important to spot Auschwitz done their eyes?

Amanda Gronich: Because they didn't aftermath up each greeting thinking, "I'm an evil monster. I'm going to bash evil, monstrous things." They woke up each day, and they went astir their lives filled with justifications and beliefs successful what they were doing. 

Anderson Cooper: It makes each of america inquire the question, "Well, what americium I susceptible of doing?"

Moises Kaufman: I deliberation that's what's happening. When the assemblage comes in, they beryllium present and they go, "Who would I person been successful that picture?" 

Irene Weiss: The astir unsafe carnal successful the satellite is antheral due to the fact that different animals volition wounded you if they're bare oregon it's their quality of hunting, but antheral tin crook into an carnal successful nary time. All helium needs is permission. As soon arsenic support is fixed from higher-ups, from government, it accelerates. Even a hint of support that it's good to onslaught this radical oregon exclude this radical oregon shame that group. It's-- it's happening. I-- it's ne'er stopped.

Irene Weiss, present 94, has continued to stock her communicative arsenic a unpaid astatine the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Here There are Blueberries" has been performed successful cities crossed the U.S. and the play volition unfastened successful London successful January.

Produced by Nichole Marks. Associate producer, John Gallen. Broadcast associate, Grace Conley. Edited by April Wilson.

• Holocaust
• Nazi