Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about a recently discovered photo album belonging to the adjutant to the commandant of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. The album contained roughly 120 photographs, but not the typical concentration camp pictures of starvation, suffering, and inhumanity. No, these were pictures of the SS guards at play and leisure. Having a sing-a-long with an accordian. Relaxing in lounge chairs on a patio at the SS alpine-style retreat Solahutte. Playing with a dog. At shooting practice. Hunting. Lighting the camp Christmas tree. Eating blueberries.
On the train, I stared at photographs in the New York Times, fascinated (here for article “In the Shadow of Horror, SS Guardians Frolic”), then at home I viewed the entire album online at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (here). The museum’s exhibition juxtaposes these pictures with those of the prisoners, but my imagination can readily conjure the horrors. And as I flipped through the album, what struck me most was how consistently happy they seem, like anyone taking respite from work that fulfills them. How contented, plump, and dapper; how banefully normal they appear. How unaware they are, that they are monsters.
