University of Mary Washington - Index

University of Mary Washington - summer08 - Index

Photos courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The photo album kept by Karl Hoecker (far left in deck chairs,
lighting the tree, and standing amid women eating blueberries)
contains the only known images of off-duty Nazis enjoying
themselves at Auschwitz. The image above is from the album
and shows (left to right) Dr. Josef Mengele, Rudolf Höss, Josef
Kramer, and an unidentified officer.
Nazi officers during World War II. Both the diary and the
album were tossed aside. Neither Erbelding nor Hoecker
could have envisioned how significant these chronicles
later would become. Nor could anyone have predicted
how the lives of these two people – from different eras and
backgrounds – would intersect.
One of Erbelding’s journals heralded her eventual full-time
work at the Holocaust Museum. As an archivist, the 26-yearold
history major now deals daily with diaries, memoirs,
photographs, and other pieces of people’s lives. She decides
which ones have a place in the museum’s collections.
Nothing that has crossed her desk, located in a cubicle
within the bowels of
the Washington, D.C.,
museum, has affected
her as deeply as the
photo album kept by
Karl Hoecker. Not only
has the album, sent to
the museum 18 months ago, transformed Erbelding’s job and
profile, it has garnered national attention and altered views
of the role of Nazi officers in the Holocaust.
Containing the only known photos of off-duty Nazis at
Auschwitz, the album shows SS officers relaxing and enjoying
themselves. The effect is chilling.
The 116 photographs depict Hoecker and other SS officers
during a critical time at Auschwitz – the summer and fall of
1944 when Hungarian Jews were arriving by the thousands and
the gas chambers were operating at maximum capacity.
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“We didn’t think anything like this existed,” Erbelding
said. “It’s causing us to rethink the way we have presented
the perpetrators of the Holocaust.”
The album also is causing Erbelding some restless nights.
The initial recipient and chief shepherd of the photographs,
she probably has spent more time with them than any other
individual. She keeps a copy of the album on her desk and
another copy at home. She has analyzed the photographs,
researched archives of that time period, studied events
that were taking place simultaneously, and followed up on
possible leads.
Erbelding now emerges from her cubicle regularly to
make presentations about the album, and she has been
featured on radio shows and in newspaper articles and
television documentaries. “I have become the face of this
whole thing,” she said.
The hard part, though, is that it has forced Erbelding
to stare regularly into
“The album shows mass murderers
the faces of Nazi men
and women – people
at play,” Erbelding said.
who could pass as her
“It’s so jarring, it’s hard to reconcile.”
coworkers, friends, and
family members. “They
don’t look evil.”
But evil was rampant at Auschwitz in 1944. It has been
described as “a slaughterhouse such as the world has never
seen.” During the 54 days of the Hungarian deportation,
the height of the period chronicled in Hoecker’s album,
approximately 437,000 Jews were taken from their homes
in Hungary and sent by train to Auschwitz. With about
8,000 Jews arriving daily and nearly 6,500 of them killed
immediately, the crematoriums became so overrun that
bodies were thrown into pits and set on fire.
All the while, the photographs reveal, Karl Hoecker and