In German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust, the Politische Abteilung Erkennungsdienst in the Auschwitz concentration camp was a kommando of SS officers and prisoners who photographed camp events, visiting dignitaries, and building works on behalf of the camp's commandant, Rudolf Höss. The Erkennungsdienst also took photographs of inmates, including gassings, experiments, escape attempts, suicides, and portraits of registered prisoners when they first arrived at the camp. Led by its director, SS-Hauptscharführer Bernhard Walter, and deputy director, SS-Unterscharführer Ernst Hofmann, the Erkennungsdienst took the 193 photographs that came to be known as the Auschwitz Album, which included images of Hungarian Jewsin the summer of 1944 just before they were gassed.
Location and staff
SS staff
Established by Rudolf Höss in December 1940 or January 1941, the Erkennungsdienst was based on the ground floor of block 26 in Auschwitz I, where there was a studio and darkroom. Bernhard Walter was director of the Erkennungsdienst. He was born on 27 April 1911 in Fürth, Bavaria, and joined the SS when he was 22, on 2 May 1933. He was assigned to the 2nd Brandenburg Totenkopf regiment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he worked with Höss and ran the camp's Erkennungsdienst. Transferred to Auschwitz in 1941, he ran the Auschwitz Erkennungsdienst from 1 January 1941 until 18 January 1945. After Auschwitz, he was transferred to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Ernst Hofmann became deputy director of the Erkennungsdienst on 16 May 1941. Other staff members included SS-Unterscharführer Alfred Schmidt and SS-Rottenführer Wenzel Leneis.
Prisoners
Prisoners were assigned to work for the Erkennungsdienst as photographers and darkroom workers. Franz Maltz, a German inmate, was the kapo; he had been the kapo at the Sachsenhausen Erkennungsdienst. Other prisoners included Wilhelm Brasse, Tadeusz Brodka, Eugeniusz Dembek, Edward Josefsberg, [|Bronisław Jureczek], Roman Karwat, Leonid Koren, Tadeusz Krzysica, Tadeusz Myszkowski, Zdzisław Pazio, Jozef Pysz, Jozef Swiatloch, Stanisław Tralka, Wladyslaw Wawrzyniak, and Alfred Woycicki.
Photographs
One function of the Erkennungsdienst was to take three photographs of each newly registered prisoner, and to create prisoner identification papers with fingerprints. These details were circulated to the police in the event of an escape. If a prisoner died as a result of an escape attempt or suicide, the Erkennungsdienst took photographs of the body, which were added to the prisoner's file and forwarded to SS-WVHA Office Group D. The Erkennungsdienst also photographed medical experiments and visiting dignitaries. On 17 and 18 July 1942, Walter or Hofmann photographed Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, during a visit to the camp. It was the second time Himmler had inspected Auschwitz. He watched a gassing in its entirety, from the point of unloading the transport to emptying the gas chamber and burying the victims. He also inspected the Kanada warehouses and the women's camp, where he reportedly asked to see a flogging. At the end of the visit, he promoted Rudolf Höss, the camp commandant, to Obersturmbannführer. In May 1944, Richard Baer became commandant of Auschwitz, while Höss was promoted to Standortältester. From May to August 1944, for reasons unknown, Walter and Hofmann photographed transports of Jews from their arrival at Auschwitz II to the gas chamber. The 193 photographs became known as the Auschwitz Album. It was used as evidence in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, during which Walter testified at first that he had not been the photographer, but eventually he acknowledged having taken some of the images. The album was also used as evidence in the 2015 trial of Oskar Gröning in Lüneburg, Germany.
Liberation of Auschwitz
As the Red Army approached Auschwitz from the east in January 1945, the SS ordered that the camp be dismantled and abandoned. Efforts were made to destroy evidence and thousands of inmates were sent on a westwards death march. The Erkennungsdienst was ordered to destroy their photographs, supervised by Walter. Walter saved the Auschwitz Album photographs and the photographs of Heinrich Himmler. William Brasse, a prisoner who worked for the Erkennungsdienst, said he believed Walter and Hofmann took their images to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, including film of medical experiments they had recorded for one of the camp doctors, Josef Mengele. Walter ordered Brasse and another prisoner, Bronisław Jureczek, to burn the images of prisoners. Jureczek said: Before they left the camp on 18 January, Brasse said, they hid the negatives in the studio and boarded the door up behind them. As a result, 38,916 photographs survived. After the camp's liberation, prisoners carried the images in bags to the Polish Red Cross in Cracow, and in 1947 they were added to the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
