‘A Horrific Impression of Jewish Martyrdom’: Regarding Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures

One of the first publications of the Central Jewish Historical Commission (Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna, CŻKH) in Poland after the Holocaust was a multilingual folio volume of photos, Zagłada żydostwa polskiego: Album zdjęć; Extermination of Polish Jews: Album of Pictures, published in 1946. This article aspires to recover this relatively unknown album from near-oblivion and situate it in the history of Holocaust photography while shedding light on its distinguishing features. Most of the album's photos were taken by German photographers. With this in mind, the author argues that the aim of the album's editor, Gerzon Taffet, and the CŻKH was to use German-produced photos in their possession, with all of their inherent limitations, to document Nazi anti-Jewish crimes in Poland and to bring an international mass audience, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, closer to the horrors of the Nazi persecution and murder of Polish Jews. At the end of the album, however, Taffet and the CŻKH inserted photos taken by Jews that extol Jewish resistance in an attempt to subvert the ‘German gaze’ that permeates the album with the ‘Jewish gaze.’