University of Mary Washington - Index

University of Mary Washington - summer08 - Index

Photos courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
That’s also when she began doing “serious detective
work.”
Whose album was this, she wondered. And how did it
get to Frankfurt.
Colleagues at the museum started recognizing other
notorious SS figures in the photos, and previously unknown
information began to come to light.
The setting for many of the pictures was a little-known
pastoral retreat in the Polish hills called Solahutte.
Apparently, Nazi officers and Auschwitz staff members
went there to relax.
In one of the photographs, about a dozen women sit on
the railing of a deck holding bowls. The caption is: “Here
there are blueberries.” The women show mock dissatisfaction
that all their blueberries are gone. Standing in their midst
grinning from ear to ear is a Nazi officer.
The same man appears on the cover of the album and
throughout its pages. Though his name does not appear
anywhere in the album, Erbelding picked up clues and drew
conclusions regarding the identity of the album’s owner. In
addition to the dates written under the photographs and the
cords that appear on the main subject’s uniform, Erbelding
conducted research on SS records seized after the war. She
was convinced the album belonged to and was created by
SS-Obersturmführer Karl Hoecker, the adjutant to the
commandant of Auschwitz.
Hoecker arrived at Auschwitz in May 1944, at the height
of the Hungarian deportation, and was promoted to adjutant
in June. He fled from Auschwitz when Soviet troops liberated
it in January of 1945.
In 1963, Hoecker was tried, along with 20 other men,
36
UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON MAGAZINE����������������
Auschwitz SS hierarchy sing along
with an accordion player during
a social gathering. Karl Hoecker
is on the front row, far left,
surrounded by some of the most
notorious Nazi officers.
at the Frankfurt Auschwitz
trials. Erbelding discovered a
photograph of Hoecker among
the defendants. Although
nearly 20 years had passed, the
resemblance was striking.
Due to lack of concrete
evidence that Hoecker was
actively involved in the
gassings at Auschwitz, he was
found guilty only of aiding
and abetting in the deaths of
1,000 persons on four separate occasions. He was sentenced
to seven years in prison. A father of at least two children,
he returned to the banking career he had picked up after
the war, took up gardening, and died eight years ago at the
age of 88.
Erbelding thinks a lot about Hoecker. “I’ve stared at him
for a year and half now; I know his mannerisms, I know his
expressions,” she said. “I wonder what was going through
his head. I wonder what his relationship with his kids was
like. I wonder if he thought about what happened to the
scrapbook.”
But even more, Erbelding thinks about Hoecker’s victims
– the men, women, and children pictured in the only other
known album from wartime Auschwitz. That album, which
came to light years ago, is known as the Lili Jacob album in
honor of the woman who discovered it after the war. Nearly
200 photographs, taken on May 26, 1944 – interestingly, one
day after Hoecker reported for duty at Auschwitz – depict
the arrival of a train of prisoners and their fate. It happened
to be the train on which Jacob and her family were riding.
She was the only survivor in her family.
The Jacob album is at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust
memorial in Jerusalem.
The two albums must be viewed together, Erbelding
said. “They complement each other in frightening and
confusing ways.”
UMW history professor Jeff McClurken, Erbelding’s advisor,
said that if viewed out of context, the Hoecker scrapbook comes
across as “a vacation album.” He credits his former student
with playing a critical role in bringing the album to light.
In the hands of someone less knowledgeable, McClurken