University of Mary Washington - Index

University of Mary Washington - summer08 - Index

his fellow SS officers were enjoying associations with women
stationed at Auschwitz and the pleasures of a mountain
resort 19 miles south of the crematorium. There was hunting
and drinking. One photo shows a cluster of several dozen
officers singing along with an accordion player. Others show
Hoecker lighting the candles on a Christmas tree, serving
blueberries to a group of women, lounging on deck chairs,
and playing with his German shepherd, Favorit.
“The album shows mass murderers at play,” Erbelding
said. “It’s so jarring, it’s hard to reconcile.”
History 299, Introduction to the
Study of History, a required – and
rigorous – course for history majors
at Mary Washington, was integral to
Erbelding landing the Holocaust museum internship that
led to her full-time job. It also was the key to her recognizing
the significance of the Hoecker photo album.
Such an intense undergraduate focus on historiography,
research, and writing already had given Erbelding an edge
in graduate school.
The professional benefits became clear in late 2006 when
an envelope that had been circulating throughout the museum
landed on her desk. Addressed to the museum’s Research
Department, an entity that does not exist, the envelope had
been marked up; eventually, ERBELDING was written in
big letters across the address.
The letter inside was from a former U.S. Army counterintelligence
officer who had taken an apartment in a bombed-
out building in Frankfurt after the war. In the closet of the
apartment, this officer found an album of black-and-white
photos that appeared to be taken at Auschwitz.
When he returned to the United States, the officer
took a government job, settled in Virginia, and stashed the
album in his basement. After his wife died and he thought
about disposing of his possessions, he wrote the letter to
the museum.
He said that the album, which included German captions,
seemed to depict “activities in and around Auschwitz,
Poland.”
Erbelding, who reads at least a dozen prospective donation
letters a week, was skeptical. She figured that if the photos
were, in fact, of Auschwitz, they were copies of existing
photographs. But something about the letter intrigued her.
She asked the gentleman – who wished to remain anonymous
– to send the album.
When it arrived in mid-January 2007, Erbelding
unwrapped it at her desk and started flipping through the
yellowed and stained pages. “Your heart starts racing,” she
said. It wasn’t until the third time through, though, that
the album’s significance started to register.
A face on the far left of one of the photographs stood
out. It appeared to be Josef Mengele, the subject of one of
Erbelding’s History 299 research papers. Known in Holocaust
lore as the Angel of Death, Mengele was a medical doctor
who conducted experiments on prisoners, many of them
children, particularly twins. Through her studies, Erbelding
was aware that there were no known wartime photographs
of Mengele at Auschwitz. Her UMW research, though, had
provided her with enough knowledge of his appearance
that she was certain he was one of the men pictured in
the album.
“That was my eureka moment,” Erbelding said.
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