Although there have been significant genocides in history, Hitler’s inhuman extermination of the Jews goes down in history as the most cold blood ruthless and programmed one that was not fuelled by hatred and competition between races but for nefarious purposes of making a scapegoat of a community to give war-torn Germany a reason to divert their attention to a made up enemy. What made it even more chilling is the fact that unlike other genocides that resulted in sporadic killings and incidents, this was methodic and almost like a daily business. It was akin to slaughtering animals where belongings were neatly documented and sorted for usage in various purposes. And like lambs to the slaughter, Jews were systematically led to the gas chambers where from their origins of residence to death, it was an organized supply chain of sorts to ensure precision and quantity killing. Take a look at 25 holocaust photographs you don’t usually see in history books.
The Nazis were so systematic that they made sure they huddled hundreds of Jews into bogeys of trains lying that they were simply being relocated.
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What was most grisly about these pogroms was the eerie classical music played at stations to keep them calm.
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Can you imagine the grossness of it all where people wait in waiting rooms for a turn to acquire something? These are Jewish women and children selected for the gassing process waiting their turn.
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This is typical of a sight in concentration camps where the elderly and children walked to their deaths.
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Wedding rings collected from husband and wives who were gassed. Invariably it would have been more female rings as younger men were always selected for work.
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This is a famous photograph in the war museum taken of an unidentified boy raising his arms in front of German soldiers.
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One of the more satisfying pictures taken in June 1945 of the holocaust where a survivor identifies a Nazi camp guard who would beat them ruthlessly.
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Don’t be puzzled at the American GI’s in the background who can be made out by the uniform and helmets. This was a scene in Namering Germany where 800 bodies killed by SS were laid out for other town people to see the work of their Nazi rulers. The woman is a German reacting in horror.
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A photograph of Auschwitz concentration camp taken in 1945
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Sonderkommandos were Jewish men forced to act as secondary camp guards almost like your hallway monitor to keep their fellow Jews in line. This secret photo shows women on the way to the gas chamber.
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500,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Almost all of them were exterminated in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.
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This was the typical was Jews were transported to the concentration camps. This photograph was taken of a train from Poland in 1944.
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Malnourished prisoners at the Majdanek concentration camp found by allied forces after occupying Poland.
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This is a photo f Dr Klein of Bergen Belsen concentration camp pictured standing among his many victims.
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The Nazis tried very hard to cover up evidence but their own systematic and quantitative extermination went against them. There was no way they could cover up the thousands of mass graves in the vicinity of the camps and surrounding areas. This is a shot of exhumed prisoners in Lublin camp Poland.
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Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish prisoner, who was also a photographer. He was forcibly made to document thousands of profiles after taking their pictures in Auschwitz. This is one of his pictures. Ironically, they also served as identification photos later of people who had died in the camps.
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One wonders if those who worked for the Nazis had any conscience at all. How could you remain normal in the face of the brutality unfolding before your eyes, unless you too were bitten by the barbaric bug.
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Those officers you see in the front row were enjoying themselves in this photo and that might have been their last time together. The next time they all stood together were at the Nuremberg trials when most of them in the front row were hanged..
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The only one who wasn’t caught and hanged at Nuremberg was Josef Mengele the “angel of death” who escaped to South America and died in Brazil aged 67.
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Jewish Prisoners freed by allied soldiers near Madgeburg Germany while they were being taken to a death camp by train.
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A photo of Nazi soldiers made to exhume and dig proper graves for the executed prisoners at Bergen Belsen camp October 1945.
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If you noticed, the walls on the opposite end have been stained blue by the gas Zyklon B used to kill Jews.
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This is a scene from the Babi Yar ravines in Kiev where almost 30,000 Jews were ordered to strip naked and then walk in line to be machined gunned by Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators.
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David Olere was a Jew living in France and arrested in 1943. He was sent to Auschwitz and made a Sonderkommando. He drew scenes of everyday life of his work at the camp. These are one of his artworks which serve as powerful evidence of life in Nazi concentration camps.
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An equally shameful moment of the Holocaust was the Lviv pogroms of 1941where Ukrainians indulged in rampant rapes and murders of Jews on the streets of Lwow now Lviv by Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators.
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Although one does not undermine the significance of the photo of little immigration child lying dead on the beach, In Nazi Germany, such scenes were commonplace and this is one reminder lest we forget that it is always humanity that is the biggest culprit of inhumanity.
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This was a scene from Buchenwald concentration camp where Czech doctors are examining a patient dying from starvation.
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A photo of an inmate sitting on a stool next to a corpse at Thekla concentration camp Leipzig the day it was liberated in April 1945.
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This is a photograph of the eyeglasses collected from prisoners send to the death camps for extermination. Even gold teeth weren’t spared from dead bodies as well as every personal belonging that had to be neatly sorted out by Jewish prisons themselves. It was not uncommon for husbands or wives to recognize the personal items of their partners and family members.
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Dead bodies were too many for even the Nazis to handle so they were loaded onto trains like slaughtered cattle for disposal. Incidentally, this was a black and white image but colorized later.
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Prisoners liberated at Bergen Belsen collect their rations from British soldiers in April 1945. One must commend such people who in spite of the most horrific ordeal, still were left with hope to smile.
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