Rigler’s Class Blog

Description:  In December 2006, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and former member of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) wrote to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives. As one of its many tasks as a military intelligence agency, the CIC conducted investigations of Nazi perpetrators for U.S. prosecutors in the Judge Advocate General’s Office after World War II. While stationed in Germany in 1946, this officer found a photograph album in an abandoned apartment in Frankfurt and took it home with him. In 2007, he donated the album to the Museum, but wanted his donation to remain anonymous.

The album contained 116 pictures taken between May and December 1944 chronicling the life of SS officers and other officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The rare images capture SS guards and Nazi officials relaxing and enjoying time off—hunting, singing, trimming Christmas trees, and more—all while Jews were being murdered at rates as fast as anytime during the Holocaust. The album was created and owned by Karl Hoecker, an adjunct to camp Kommandant Richard Baer.

The album complements the only other known collection of photographs taken at Auschwitz, published as the Auschwitz Album in 1980. Those images specifically depict the arrival of Hungarian Jews at the camp in late May 1944, and the selection process that the SS imposed on them. Some of the images contained in the new album were taken just days later. In contrast to documenting mass murder, they focus on the daily lives and recreational pursuits of Nazi officials, and no prisoner appears in any of the images. Remarkably, many of the album’s pictures were taken when the camp’s gas chambers and crematoria were operating at and above capacity as Hungarian Jews were arriving and being murdered. See all of the photos from the Hoeker album and the Auschwitz Album, and learn more about Auschwitz and Karl Hoecker at http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/highlights/auschwitz/