ABSTRACT
In August 1944, a few members of the Sonderkommando, a unit of mostly Jews who worked in the Birkenau killing centre, arranged to secretly take four photographs of the killing operation that murdered more than a million Jews. The four photographs were taken in August 1944 at Crematorium V by Alberto Israel Errera. Helena Dantón, who worked in the SS canteen, smuggled the photos out of the camp in a tube of toothpaste. Two photos show one of the pits in which bodies were burned when the crematorium could not handle the load. A third shows Jews undressing in the nearby forest, being prepared for the gas chamber. The fourth is seldom included among the Sonderkommando photos because it does not “show anything” except some nondescript images taken while Alberto was desperately running from the scene. In this chapter we shall argue that the fourth photo “shows” precisely what eludes the eyes in Auschwitz.
