Opening
In cooperation with #LastSeen. Pictures of Nazi deportations.
“Around twenty people are seated on garden chairs or stand together in small groups under bare trees. Middle-aged and elderly men and women dressed in coats and hats. Articles of luggage and bundles rest on the ground around them. Some of the chairs are unoccupied. The back of the beer garden is empty. A few leaves lay scattered on the dry earth. The sky, obscured in the image, appears overcast. The photograph shows part of the spacious outdoor area of the Schiesswerder pub in Breslau.”
#LastSeen. Pictures of Nazi deportations is an international research project that systematically compiles, indexes and digitally publishes photographic sources on Nazi deportations of people who were persecuted as Jews, Sinti, Roma, as well as victims of Nazi “euthanasia”.
In the autumn of 1941, Gestapo members and police officers began enacting mass deportations from the German Reich. The finance administration, national railways and other state authorities were also involved in the process. The photographs published in the #LastSeen photo atlas show that the deportations took place in broad daylight and in plain sight of everyone. In most cases, these were the last photographs of the persecuted people ever taken.
For a longtime, historical researchers treated photographs as merely illustrations of historical events, but today they are as sources in their own right. Artist and author John Berger described the contradictory character of the photographic image: “In itself the photograph cannot lie, but, by the same token, it cannot tell the truth; or rather, the truth it does tell, the truth it can by itself defend, is a limited one.”[1]
Because they depict what is happening in front of the camera but can't explain what is depicted, we need to be familiar with the historical context in order to understand the images.
Miriam Visaczki has written detailed descriptions of the photos from the Wroclaw and Eisenach deportations based on the research of the #LastSeen historian team. She presents recordings of the texts in two audio installations at Kunstraum Schwaz.
Jewish architect Albert Hadda most likely secretly documented the Jewish people detained in a beer garden pub that had been converted into a collection camp in Wroclaw on 21 November 1941.
Theodor Harder, a local photographer commissioned by the local authorities in Eisenach documented 58 Jewish citizens on a forced march to the train station and the deportees boarding a passenger train to Weimar on 9 May 1942.
[1] Berger, John,Appearances, in: Berger, John / Mohr, Jean (Ed.), Another Way of Telling, NewYork 1982, p. 97.
Audioinstallation:
Narrators: Maria Zillich, Flora Klein
Recording: Alexander Visaczki
#LastSeen. Picturesof Nazi deportations:
Academic research Wroclaw: Lisa Paduch and Dr. Ramona Bräu-Herget
Academic research Eisenach: Dr. Christoph Kreutzmüller
Overall publication of the #LastSeen project: Dr. Alina Bothe
Partner organizations of #LastSeen:
Arolsen Archives - International Center on Nazi Persecution
USC Dornsife - Center for Advanced Genocide Research
Hadamar Memorial Museum
House of the Wannsee Conference memorial and educational site
Municipal Department of Arts and Culture Munich - Public History München
Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg
Financial support of #LastSeen. Pictures of Nazi deportations:
Alfred Landecker Foundation
The Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation (EVZ) (2021-2023)
The #LastSeen image atlas received the Grimme Online Award in 2024.
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