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Visitors' Guide Cincinnati SkirballMuseum inpartnership with The CenterforHolocaust andHumanity Education presents 12NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS: Photographs by James Friedman October 13, 2016—January 29, 2017 VISITORS’ GUIDE The FotoFocus Biennial 2016 is a regional, month-long celebration of photography and lens-based art held throughout Cincinnati and the surrounding region that features over 60 exhibitions and related programming. As part of the Biennial, participating venues respond to the theme: Photography, the Undocument. A FOTOFOCUS exhibition presented by the Cincinnati Skirball Museum of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in partnership with The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education. Support for this exhibition was provided by Cover photo: Local resident with scythe and self-portrait, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp, Oswiecim, Poland, 1983 ©James Friedman Cincinnati SkirballMuseum inpartnership with The CenterforHolocaust andHumanity Education presents 12NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS: Photographs by James Friedman PHOTOGRAPHER’S STATEMENT My pictures were created in color with a cumbersome 8” x 10” field camera. The expectation on the part of many viewers is that contemporary photographs of Nazi concentration camps should be in black and white and without people or reference to the contemporary world. My color photographs include self-portraits, tourists and survivors, and have inspired visceral responses in many viewers. My color photographs exist in stark contrast to the historical black and white photographic record of Holocaust images that are the basis for most viewers’ knowledge and understanding of the Nazi era. — James Friedman “James Friedman’s ’12 Nazi Concentration Camps’ is arguably the most significant body of photographic work on the concentration camps in the post-Holocaust era …” — Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing by Dora Apel, Ph.D. Local resident, photographer, shepherd, Bisingen concentration camp, West Germany, 1981 ©James Friedman THE HOLOCAUST The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state sponsored persecution and murder of the Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. Survivors’ Reunion, Natzweiler-Struthof Roma and Sinti, also known as concentration camp, France, 1981 Gypsies, non-Jewish Poles and ©James Friedman people with disabilities were also targeted for murder. Many other individuals and groups were persecuted. Two out of three European Jews were killed during the Holocaust, approximately six million. CONCENTRATION CAMP UNIVERSE There were over 40,000 camps established during the Nazis’ Sculpture and photographer’s amulet, Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, twelve years of tyranny. The near Strasbourg, France, 1981 first camp, Dachau, was built in ©James Friedman 1933, just months after Hitler was appointed chancellor. Camps had various purposes including containment, slave QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION labor, and six specifically • When you think about the established for mass murder. Holocaust, what image(s) come Though camps were a means of to mind? suppression and dehumanization, • Does this exhibition prompt you prisoners found ways to to think differently about sites of persevere through spiritual the Holocaust? resistance and the support of • What ways do you think are most fellow prisoners. appropriate to memorialize sites of the Holocaust or atrocity? SECONDARY WITNESS What does it mean to be a secondary witness? Secondary witnesses interpret the past by retracing the experiences of those who came before them. Parking lot, Dachau concentration camp, West Germany, 1981 Often grappling with identity, a ©James Friedman secondary witness tends to shift the focus from the past to an evaluation of the past through today’s perspective. James Friedman’s photography, for example, contrasts what is traditionally thought of concerning the Holocaust by challenging viewers to see these sites through a modern day lens. If you are interested in reading more about secondary witnessing, Survivor of three Nazi concentration please see the bibliography of camps, Survivors’ Reunion, Majdanek resources on the CHHE website: concentration camp, Poland, 1983 holocaustandhumanity.org/12- ©James Friedman nazi-concentration-camps/ • Why visit such sites today? the photographer is trying • How do generations post- to convey? Holocaust respond to this history? • What emotions do you feel when • How do generations post- you look at the photographs? Holocaust investigate this history? • What is one thing you will share • How can we as individuals bear with others after viewing this witness to this history? exhibition? Why? • Some of these images can be • What photograph stood out to shocking. What do you think you? Why? 12 NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS MAJDANEK In the fall of 1941, construction began on Extermination Camp Majdanek. Built by approximately 2,000 Soviet Poland POWs, in nearly three years of operation, the camp would claim 95,000-130,000 lives. The majority of prisoners and those who died in the camp’s system were Jews. Majdanek was one of the two extermination camps that used Zyklon B to murder prisoners. It was the first major camp to be liberated by the Soviets in July 1944. AUSCHWITZ I The Auschwitz concentration camp complex Concentration Camp was the largest of its kind established by Poland the Nazis. Auschwitz I was established in 1940 in pre-existing Polish Army barracks. Using POWs, the camp was expanded, and at its height, included over 44 subcamps. In September 1941, Zyklon B was tested at Auschwitz on Soviet POWs for use in mass murder operations. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets in January 1945. BIRKENAU Construction for Birkenau began in October (AUSCHWITZ II) 1941 and would eventually include four large Extermination Camp crematoria with gas chambers. Birkenau had Poland the largest population of prisoners who were divided into the camp’s nine sections separated by electrified barbed-wire fences. In 1944, hundreds of prisoners revolted, blowing up crematoria IV with explosives that had been smuggled into the camp. Despite this revolt, gassings continued until November 1944. Birkenau was liberated by the Soviets in January 1945. Approximately one million Jews were killed in the Auschwitz- Birkenau camp complex while many Roma (gypsies), Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war also perished there. NATZWEILER- Built by the Germans in May 1941, it would STRUTHOF grow to include 50 subcamps located on Concentration Camp both sides of the German French border. The France majority of prisoners held at the camp were members of the French resistance. In 1943, a gas chamber was constructed and used to murder Jews for an anthropological study aimed to establish “racial inferiority” and also to murder Roma (gypsies) being used for medical experiments. By the fall of 1944 there were about 7,000 prisoners in the main camp and more than 20,000 in the subcamp system. Prisoners were used as forced labor to produce arms and build underground manufacturing facilities. Between 19,000- 20,000 people died in the Natzweiler- Struthof camp system. The camp was never liberated but dissolved when the Nazis sent the remaining prisoners on death marches to camps in the east. Footage from this camp was featured in the 1955 French documentary, Night and Fog, directed by Alain Resnais. BISINGEN Built in late 1944 as a subcamp of Natzweiler- Concentration Camp Struthof camp system, 1,000 prisoners from Germany Auschwitz were sent to Bisingen as forced labor. At its height, the camp held 15,000 prisoners in squalid conditions. With the Allies approaching in April 1945, more than 700 prisoners were sent on transports and some were forced on death marches to Dachau. French occupying powers ordered the mass grave at Bisingen exhumed and the victims given proper burial in a newly constructed cemetery. VAIHINGEN Built in late 1943 as a subcamp of Natzweiler- AN DER ENZ Struthof, it was first established as a slave labor Concentration Camp camp, but later for seriously ill prisoners left to Germany die. With no medicine or medical equipment, the camp averaged 33 deaths per day. In April 1945, those prisoners who could walk were marched to Dachau. The French Army liberated the camp on April 7, 1945. The city of Vaihingen exhumed sites of mass graves, recording 1,488 bodies, which were interred in a concentration camp cemetery on the grounds of the former camp. BERGEN-BELSEN Established in 1940, Bergen-Belsen would be Concentration Camp a POW camp until 1943, at which time it was Germany expanded to also include a civilian residence camp and a concentration camp. Each of these camps also had subcamps. In late 1944 Bergen-Belsen became a collection camp for thousands of Jewish prisoners who had been forced on death marches from neighboring camps. The influx of prisoners at the war’s end caused horrendous living conditions in the camp. The overcrowding led to outbreaks of disease, claiming tens of thousands in just a few months. Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British on April 15, 1945. Approximately 50,000 people died in the camp. After liberation, it was converted into a Displaced Persons camp, housing more than 12,000 survivors. DACHAU Dachau was established in March 1933, just Concentration Camp weeks after Hitler was appointed chancellor. It Germany was the first concentration camp established by the Nazis on the grounds of a former munitions factory. It remained in operation for the entire war. It was the training center for SS camp guards and operations were seen as a “model” for future camps. Dachau was also the site of inhumane medical experiments on prisoners by German physicians. The camp would grow to include 30 subcamps, incarcerating more than 188,000 during its existence. In April 1945, 7,000 of the then 67,665 registered prisoners were forced on a death march. American forces liberated the remaining prisoners at Dachau three days later. Between Jan. 1940-May 1945, 28,000 prisoners died in Dachau. The number of prisoners who died between 1933-1937, plus an unknown number of undocumented prisoners, makes it impossible to know an exact number of total victims.
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