FÛL'R PIETES

ÛF F¡LM

st\tATffijËD

FRtM !-iil-T_

In order to know, we must imagine

for ourselves.'We must attempt toimagine the hell that Auschwitzwas in the summer of ry44. Letus not invoke the unimaginable.Let us not shelter ourselves bysaying that we cannot, that wecould not by any means, imagineit to the very end.W e are obliged tothat oppressive imaginable. It is a

response that we must offer, as a debt to the words and images

that certain prisoners snatched, for us, from the harrowing Real

of their experience. So let us not invoke the unimaginable. Howmuch harder was it for the prisoners to rip from the camps those

few shreds of which now we are trustees, charged with sustain-

ing them simply by looking at them. Those shreds are at the same -1

time more precious and less comforting than all possible works of /

art, snatched as they were from a world bent on their impossibil-ity. Thus, images in spite of all: in spite of the hell of Auschwitz; '

in spite of the risks taken. In return, we must contemplate them,take them on, and try to comprehend them. Images in spite of alllin spite of our own inability to look at them as they deserve; inspite of our own world, full, almost choked, with imaginary com-modities.

tlOf all the prisoners in Auschwitz, those whose possible testimony the SS wanted to eradicate at any cost were, of course, themembers of the Sonderkommando. This was the "special squad" ofprisoners who operated the mass extermination with their bare

hands. The SS knew in advance that a single word from a surviving

til

member ofth e Sonderkommando would quash any denials, any sub-

sequent cavils with respect to the massacre ofthe EuropeanJews't

"Cãnceiving and organizing the squads was National Socialism's

most demonic crime," writes Primo Levi. "One is stunned by this

paroxysm of perfidy and of hate: it must be the Jews who put the

Jews in the orrens; it must be shown that the Jews [. . .] bow to any

humiliation, even to destroying themselves-"'

The first Sonderkomma.ndo atAuschwitz was created on July 4,

1942, during the "selection" of a convoy of SlovakianJews for the

gas chamber. Twelve squads succeeded each other from that date;

each was eliminated at the end of a few months, and "as its initia-

tion, the next squad burnt the corpses of its predecessors."3 Part ofthe horror for these men was that their entire existence , including

the ineluctable gassing of the squad, was to be kept in absolute

secrecy. The members ofthe Sond.erkommando couldtherefore have

no contact whatsoever with the other prisoners, and even less with

whatever "outside world" there was, not even with the "nonini-

tiated" SS, those who were ignorant of the exact functioning ofthe gas chambers and the crematoria.a When sick, these prisoners,

kept in solitary confinement, were denied admission to the camp

hospital. They were held in total subservience and mindlessness-

they were not denied alcohol-in their work at the crematoria'

What exactly was their work? It must be repeated: to handle

the death oftheir fellows by the thousands. To witness all the last

moments. To be forced to lie to the very end. (A member of the

Sonderkommandowhohad attempted to warn the victims of their

fate was thrown alive into the cremetorium fire, and his fellows

were forced to attend the execution).s To recognize one's o'tiln

and to say nothing. To watch men' women, and children enter

the gas chamber. To listen to the cries, the banging, the death

throes. To wait. Then, to receive all at once the "indescribable hu-

man heap"-a "column of basalt" made of human flesh, of their

flesh, our own flesh-that collapsed when the doors were opened'

To drag the bodies one by one, to undress them (until the Nazis

thought of the changing room). To hose away all of the accumu-

lateðblood, body fluids, and pus. To extract gold teeth for the

spoils of the ReicÍt.To Put the bodies in the furnaces of the cre-

I rule es ril sPITE oF At[

7

FouR PTECES 0F FttM SÌ{ATCHE0 FnoM HErr ]

matoria. To maintain this inhuman routine. To feed coal to thefires. To extract the human ashes from that "formless, incandes-cent and whitish matter which flowed in rivulets [and] took ona grryish tint when it cooled." To grind the bones, the final resis-

tance of the wretched bodies to their industrial destruction. Topile it all up, to throw it into a neighboring river or use it as fill forthe road being constructed near the camp. To walk on t5o squaremeters ofhuman hair, which fifteen prisoners are busy carding onlarge tables. To occasionally repaint the changing room; to erecrhedges-for camouflage; to dig supplementary incineration pitsfor exceptional gassings. To clean, to repair the giant ovens ofthecrematoria. To start over each da¡ constantly threatened by theSS. To survive in this menner for an indeterminate time, drunk,working day and night, "running like the possessed in order tofinishmore quickly."ó

"They had no human figure. They were ravaged, mad faces," said

the prisoners who were able to see them.7 They survived, however,for the time left to them, in the ignominy ofthe job. To a prisonerwho asked him how he could stand work of that kind, a memberof the squad replied: "Of course, I could throw myself onto theelectrical wires, like so many ofmy friends, but I want to live [. . .].In our work, ifyou don't go mad the first da¡ you get used to it."8In a manner ofspeaking. Yet some who thought themselves "used

to it" simply threw themselves into the fire .

Ifthis kind of survival surpasses any moral iudgment (as PrimoLevi wrote)e or any tragic conflict (as Giorgio Agamben com-mented),to then what could the verb to resist mean in such con-straints? To revolt? That was a dignified way of commitring sui-cide, of anticipating a promised elimination. At the end of r94z,a first proiected rebellion failed. Then, in the great mutiny of Oc-tober r944-when, at least, crematorium fV was set abl¿z_e anddestroyed-not one of the 45o members implicated survived, ofwhom "only" 3oo $¡ere due to be gassed soon in any case.lr

At the core ofthis fundamental despaia the "impulse ro resist"probably abandoned them, condemned as theywere to die, leav-ing them to concentrate rather on signals to be emittedbeyond theborders of the camp: "We, the prisoners olthe Sonderkommando,

kept thinking about how we might make known to the world thedetails ofthe gruesome crimes which were perpetuated here."t2 So

in April 1944, Filip Müller patiently gathered some documents - a

plan ofcrematoria fV and V a note on their operation, a list oftheNazis on duty as well as a Zyklon B label-and passed them along

to two prisoners who were attempting escape.t3 Such an attempt,as all ofthe Sonderkommandol<¡ew,was hopeless. This is why theysometimes confided their testimonies to the earth. Digs under-taken around the borders ofthe Auschwitz crematoria have since

brought to light-often long after the Liberation-the devastat-

ing, barely legible writings of these slaves of death.ta Bottles cast

into tbe eartÍt as it were , except that the writers did not always have

bottles in which to preserve their message. At best, a tin bowl.lsThese writings are haunted by rwo complementery constraints.

First, there is the ineluctable obliteration of the witness himself;"The SS often tell us that they won't let a single witness survive."

But then there was the fear that the testimony itself would be

obliterated, even if it \il'ere trensmitted to the outside; for did itnot risk being incomprehensible, being considered senseless, un-imaginable? "'What exactly happened," as Zalmen Lewental con-

fided'to the scrap of paper that he was preparing to bury in theground, "no other human being can imagine."l6

, t'

I

.,1

t\

One summer day inry44,the members of the Sonderkommando feltthe perilous need to snatch some photographs from their infernalwork that would bear witness to the specific horror and extentofthe massacre. The need to snatch some photographs from thereal.Moreover, since an image is made to be looked at by others,

to snatch from human thought in general, thought from "outside ,"

something imøginøble that no one until then had even conceived

as possible-and this is already saying a lot, since the whole thingwas planned before being put into practice.

I rmlers ril sPrTE oF Att F0uR PTECES 0F Flrrrt SilATGHE0 Fn0il HEt [ ]

It is troubling that a desire to snatcb an image should materializeat the most indescribable momenq as it is often characterized, ofthe massacre ofthe Jews: the moment when those who assisted, stu-pefied, had room left for neither thought nor imagination. Time,space, gaze, thought, pathos-everything was obfuscated by themachinelike enormity of the violence produced. In the summerof tg44camethe "tidal wave" of HungarianJews:435,ooo ofrhemwere deported to Auschwitz between May 15 and July g.r7 Jean-Claude Pressac (whose scientific scrupulousness generally avoidsany adjectives or eny emparheric phrases) wrote that this was rhe"most demented episode of Birkenau," carried out essentially incrematoria II, III, and V.r8 In a single ðay, z4,ooo HungarianJewswere exterminated. Toward the end of the summer, there wasa shortage oÍZyk7onB. So "the unfit from the convoys [i.e., thevictims selected for immediate death] were casr directþ into theburning pits ofcrematorium V and of bunker z,"re in otherwords,burned alive. As for the g¡rpsies, they began to be gassed en massefromAugustr.

As usual, the members of the Sonderkommando posted at thecrematoria had to prepere the entire infrastructure ofthis night;mare. Filip Müller remembers how they proceeded to "overhaulthe crematoria":

Cracks in the brickwork ofthe ovens were filledwith a specialfireproofclay paste; rhe casr-iron doors were painted blackand the door hinges oiled [. . .]. Newgrates were fiæed in thegenerators, while the six chimneys underwenr a thorough in-spection and repair, as did the electric fans. The walls ofthefour changing rooms and the eight gas chambers were givena fresh coat ofpaint. Cù'ite obviously all these efforts were in-tended to putthe places ofexrermination into peak conditionto guarantee smooth and continuous operation."zo

Above all, on the orders of HøuptscÍtarfiÍtrn OæoMoll-a partic-ularly feared and hated SS officer who had taken personal chargeof the liquidation of the Sonilerkommøndo fromrg4z onzt-frveincineration pits were to be dug in the open air, behind cremero-rium V. Filip Mäller has described in detail the technical experi-

mentation and the management of the site led by MolL from theconception ofgutters to collect the fat, to the concrete slab onwhich the "workers" would have to pulverize the bones mixedwith the human ashes;22 to the elevated hedgerows forming a

screen to make all of this invisible from the exrerior (fig. r). It issignificant that, apart from far-offaerial views, not one single viewexists ofcrematorium V-situated in a copse of birch trees, fromwhichBirkenaugets its name-thatis not obscured by some plantbarrierz3 (fig.r).

To snatch an image from that hell? It seemed doubly impos-sible. It was impossible by default, since the detail of the installa-tions was concealed, sometimes underground. But also, outsideof their work under the strict control ofthe SS, members of theSonderkomntando were carefully confined in a "subterranean andisolated cell."2a It was impossible by excess, since the vision of thismonstrous, complex chain seemed to exceed any attempt to docu-ment it. Filip Müller wrote thar "in comparison with what fOttoMoll] had imagined and what he had begun ro underrake, Danre'sHell was only child's play"Ss

As-it began to groïv light, the fire was lit in ¡wo of the pitsin which about z,5oo dead bodies lay piled one on top ofthe other. Two hours later all that could be discerned in thewhite-hot flames were countless charred and scorched shapes

[. . .]. While in the crematorium ovens, once the corpses werethoroughly alight, it was possible to maintain a lasting redheat with the help of fans, in the pits the fire would burn as

long as the air could circulate freely in between the bodies.As the heap of bodies settled, no air was able to get in fromoutside. This meant that we stokers had constantly to pouroil or wood alcohol on the burning corpses, in addition tohuman fat, large quantities of which had collected and was

boiling in the trvo collecting pans on either side ofthe pit. Thesizzlingfat was scooped out with buckets on a long curvedrod and poured all over the pit causing flames to leap up amidmuch crackling and hissing. Dense smoke and fumes rose in-cessantþ The air reeked ofoil, fat, ben/ole and burnt flesh.

I rulers ril sPrrE oF Arr F0uR ptEcEs 0F FtrM silATCltED FRoM flEtr ]

During the day-shift there were, on average, r4o prisonersworking in and round crematoria fV and V. Some twenry_fivebearers were employed in clearing the gas chamber and re_moving the corpses to the pits [. . .].

The SS guards on their watch-rowers beyond the barbedwire which encircled the area around the pits [. . .] were badlyupser byúe ghoulish specacle [. . .]. Under the ever_increasingheat a few of the dead began to stir, writhing as though witf,some unbearable pain, arms and legs straining in slow Ãotion,and even their bodies straightening up a little [. . .]. Eventu_ally the fi¡e became so fierce that the corpses were envelopedby flames. Blisters which had formed on rheir skin burst ãneby one. Almost every corpse was covered with black scorchmarks and glistened as if it had been greased. The searingheat had burst open their bellies: rhere was the violent hiss_ing and sputtering offrying in great heat [. . .]. The process ofincineration took five to six hours. what was left baiely fileda third of the pit. The shiny whitish-gray surface *", it .*owith countless skulls [. . .]. As soon es the ashes had cooleddown a little, wooden metal-covered boards were throwninto the pit. Prisoners ofthe ash team climbed down and be_gan to shovel our rhe still hot ashes. Although their miftensand berets gave them some make-shift protection, hot asheskept blowing down on them, especially when it was wind¡causing severe facial burns and eye iniuries, somerimes evenblindness, so thar after a short time they were issued with pro_tective goggles.

Once the pits had been emptied and the ashes taken to theash depot, the{' were piled up in man-high heaps.26

tlTo snatch an image from that, in spite ofthat? yes. Whatever the..9Ìl: frtT had to be given ro rhis unimaginable reality. The pos_sibilities for escape or ofrevolt were so limited at Ausihwi rrlth^,the mere sending of an image or ofinformation-a plan, numbers,names-was ofthe utmost urgenc¡ one ofthe last gestures ofhu_

manity. Some prisoners had managed to listen to the BBC in the

offices they were cleaning. Others managed to send calls for help."The isolation of the outside world was part of the psychological

pressure exercised on the prisoners," ¡ilrote Hermann Langbein.

"Among the efforts to defend oneselffrom the psychic terrorism,

there were obviously those that sought to break the isolation. For

the morale of the prisoners, this last factor increased in impor-tance year by year as the military situation unfolded."'7 On theirside, the leaders of the Polish Resistance were in 1944 demand-

ing photographs. According to a witness's account collected by

Langbein, a civilian worker managed to smuggle in a camera and

I rmle rs ril sPrÌE oF Âtt FouR prEcEs 0r FtrM st¡ATcHE0 FR0M HErr ]

get it into the hands ofthe members olthe Sonderkommøndo.2}Thecamera probably contained only a small piece of blank film.

For the shooting, a collective lookout had to be organized. Theroof of crematorium V was deliberately damaged so that certainsquad members \Mere sent by the SS to repair it. From up there,David Szmulewski could be on watch: he observed rhose-nota-bly the guards in nearby observation posts-who were chargedwith overseeing the work of the Sonderkommando.Hiddenatthebottom of a bucker, the camera got into the hands of a Greek Jewcalled Alex, still unidentified toda¡ for we do not know his fam-ily name. He was positioned on the lower level, in front of theincineration pits, where he was supposed to work with the othermembers ofthe squad.

The terrible paradox of this darkroom was rhat in order to re-move the cemera from the bucket, adjust the viewfinder, bring itclose to his face, and take a firsr sequence of images (figs. 3-a),

Figure r. Anonymous (German). Hedge for camouflage at

crematorium V of Auschwie¿, 1943-1944. Oswiecin,

Auschwie-Birkenau State Museum (negatiïe no. 86o).

11

Figure z. Anonymous (German). Crematorium V ofAuschwitz, r 94J-Lg44.Oswiecim, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (negative no. zo995l 5oB).

the photographer had to hide in the gas chamber, itself barely

emptied-perhaps incompletely-ofvictims. He steps back intothe dark space. The slant and the darkness in which he stands

protect him. Emboldened, he changes direction and advances:

I rultrs ril sPITE oF Atl FouR prEcEs 0F FtrM st¡ATcHEn rnom trrr ]

the second view is a little more fronral and slightly closer. So itis more hazardous. Bur also, paradoxicall¡ it is more posed: it issharper. It is as though fear had disappeared for an instant in theface of necessity, the business of snatching an image. And we see

Fþres 3-4. Anon)¡nous (member ofthe Sonilerkommanilo of Auschwitz).

Cremation ofgassed bodies in the open-air incineration pits in front ofthe

L3

gas chamber of crematorium V of Auschwitz, Au g)st;.944. Oswiecim,Auschwitz-Bi¡kenau State Museum (negative n os. 277 -278) .

H

t4

the everyday work of the other members of the squad, which is

that ofsnatching the last human semblance from the cadavers, still

sprawled on the ground. The gestures ofthe living tell the weight

ofthe bodies and the task ofmaking immediate decisions. Pulling,

dragging, throwing. The smoke, behind, comes from the incin-

eration pits: bodies arranged quincunciall¡ r.5 meters deep, the

crackling of fat, odors, shriveling of human matter-everythingof which Filip Müller speaks is there, under the screen of smoke

I rmne rs rN sPrTE oF ALt FouR ptEcEs 0F FttM si¡ATcHE0 FRoM HErr ]

that the photograph has captured for us. Behind is the birch-treecopse. The wind is blowing from the north, perhaps the north-east2e ("In Augu st of 19 44i' r emembers Primo Levi, "it was very hotin Auschwitz. A torrid, tropical wind, lifted clouds of dust fromthe buildings wrecked bythe air raids, dried the swear on our skinand thickened the blood in our veins.")30

Having hidden rhe camera-in his hand, or in the bucket, or ina patch of his clothes?-the "unknown photographer" now ven-

Figures 5-ó. Anonymous (member ofthe Sonderkommando of Auschwitz).

Women being pushed toward the gas chamber at crematorium V ofAuschwitz,

15

August 1944. Oswiecim, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum(negative nos. z Bz - 287).

Eures out ofthe cremetorium. He hugs the wall. Twice he tulns to

the right. He finds himself then on the other side of the building,

to the south, and advances in the open air toward the birch trees.

There too, the hell continues: a "convoy" of women, already un-

group ofwomen who seem to be walking or awaiting their turn'

ñ.".." three other women are headed in the opposite direction.

The image is very blurred. We can see, however, a member ofthe

Sondæklrnmando inprofile, recognizable by his cap' At the very

ting through the boughs.

Alex then returns to the crematorium, probably to the north

the camera, brought back to the central camP' and eventually ex-

tricated from Auichwitzinatube of toothpaste in which Helena

Dantón, an employee of the SS canteen, will have hidden it'32 A

little later, on Septemb er +, tg4,it would reach the Polish Resis-

tance in Krakow, accompanied by a note written by rwo political

prisoners, Jósef Cyrankiewicz and Stanislaw Klodzinski:

the crematorium could not manage to burn all the bodies'

I rmlers t]t sPtTE oF Att FouR prEcEs 0F FrtM st{ATcHEo FBoM HE[t ]

The bodies in the foreground are waiting to be thrown intothe fire. Another picture shows one of the places in the for-est where people undress before "showering"-as they weretold-and then go to the gas chambers. Send film roll as fast

as you can. Send the enclosed photos to Tell-we think en-

largements of the photos can be sent further.33

17

Y-

AGAINST ALL

UNIMAGINABLE

"Sent further . . ." Further where?

We may hypothesize that beyondmembers of the Polish Resistance

(who were perfectly aware of themassacre of the Jews), these im-eges were to be sent into a zonemore western in its thought, cul-ture, and political decision-making,

where such things could still be

said to be unimaginable. The fourphotographs snatched by the Sonderkommando of crematorium Vin Auschwitz address the unimaginøble, and refute it, in the most har-

rowing way. In order to refute the unimaginable, several men tookthe collective risk of dying and, worse, ofundergoing the punish-

ment reseryed for this kind of attempt: torture-for example, thatabominable procedure that SS Wilhelm Boger jokingly named his"writing machine."t

"Sent further": the four images snatched from the hell ofAuschwitz address two spaces, two distinct periods of the un-imaginable.'What they refute, first ofall, is the unimaginable thatwas fomented by the very organization ofthe "Final Solution." Ifa Jewish member of the Resistance in London, working as such

in supposedly well-informed circles, can admit that at the timehe was incapable ofimagining Auschwitz or Tieblinka,2 what can

be said of the rest of the world? In Hannah Arendt's anaþsis, the

Nazis "were totally convinced that one ofthe greatest chances forthe success oftheir enterprise rested on the fact that no one on the

outside could believe it."3 The fact that terrible information was

sometimes received but "repressed because ofthe sheer enormity"

Figure T.Jozef Cyrankiewicz and Stanislaw Klodzinski. Message addressed to

the Polish Resistance, Septembet 4,L944. Oswiecim, Auschwitz-Birkenau State

Museum.

['s ]

would follow Primo Levi to his nightmares. To suffer, to survive,

[i to tell, and then not to be believed because it is unimaginable.a It

Jf is as though a fundamental iniustice continued to follow the sur-il ,.ivo.s all the way to their vocation of being witnesses.

Numerous researchers have carried out detailed analyses ofthemachinery of disimagínation that made it possible for an SS officer

to sey: "Therãwiil-perhapò be suspicion, discussion, research by

historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy

the evidence together withyou. And evenifsome proofshould re-

main and some ofyou survive, people will say that the events you

describe are too monstrous to be believed."s The "Final Solution,"

as we know, was kept in absolute secrecy-silence and smothered

information.6 But as the details of the extermination began to fil-ter through, "almost from the beginning ofthe massacres,"t silence

needed a reciprocal discourse. It involved rhetoric, þing, an entire

strategy ofwords that Hannah Arendt defined int94z as the "elo-

quence ofthe devil."8

The four photographs snatched fromAuschwitz bymembers ofthe Sonderkommando were also, therefo re, four refutations snatched

from a world that the Nazis wanted to obfuscate, to leave word-less and imageless. Analyses ofthe concentration camp have long

converged on the fact that the camps were laboratories, experi-

mental machines for ageneral obliterøtion.It was the obliteration oftbe þsycbe and the disintegration of the social link, as Bruno Bet-

telheim's analysis showed as early as ry43, when he was iust outfrom eighteen months in Buchenwald and Dachau: "The concen-

tration camp was the Gestapo's laboratory for subjecting [. . .] free

men [. . .] to the process of disintegration from their position as

autonomous individualsl'e In r95o, Hannah Arendt spoke of the

camps as "laboratories ofan experience oftotal domination [. . .],

this objective being attainable only in the extreme circumstances

of a hell ofhuman making."to

It was also a hell made by humans for the obliteration of the lan'

guage of their victims. "It is an obvious assertion that where vio-

lence is inflicted on man," writes Primo Levi, "it is also inflicted on

language."l1 There is the silence imposed by isolation itself. There

I rule rs ri¡ sPITE oF AttAGArf{ST Ârr U1{rMAErilÂBIE ] {

is the jargon of the camp and its effects of terror.rz There is theperverse misappropriation ofthe German language and therefore

of German culture.'3 Finall¡ there is the lie, the perpetual lie inthe words uttered by the Nazis. Consider the innocence of theexpression Schutzstøfel, which is abbreviated as SS and denotes"protection,2 "sheltering," "safeguarding" (scbutz). Consider theneutrality ofthe adjective sonder-which means "separated," "sin-

gular," "special" even "strange" or "bizarre"-in expressions such as

Sonderbebandlung, " special treatment" (in reality, putting to deathby gas) ; Sonderbau; "special building" (in reality, the camp's brothelreserved for the "privileged"); and, ofcourse, Sonderkornmando.

When, in the midst of this coded language, an SS member calls

something what it really is-for example, when the Auschwitzadminisuation, in a message on Marchz,t943,lets slip the expres-

sion Gaskømmer,"ges chamber"-one must consider that a genu-ine lapse.ra

What the words seek to obfuscate is ofcourse the obliteration ofbumøn bdngs, the very program ofthis vast "laboratory." To murder\¡¡as not nearly enough, because the dead were never sufficiently"obliterated" in the eyes ofthe "Final Solution." Well beyond theprivation of a grave (the greatest insult to the dead in antiquity),the Nazis concentrated, rationally or irrationall¡ on "leaving no

single trace," and on obliterating every remnønt. . . Which explainsthe insanþ oÍAktion rco5 when the SS had the hundreds ofthou-sands of cadavers buried in common graves exhumed (by futurevictims of course), in order to cremate them and to disperse orreinter their ashes in the countryside.Is

The end of the "Final Solution"-in all senses of the word"end": its aim, its last stage, but also its interruption by the mili-tary defeat of the Nazis-called for a new enterprise, which was

the obliteration of tbe tools of the obliteration. Thus, crematorium Vwas destroyed in January rg+Sby the SS itself. No less than nine

explosive charges were needed, one ofwhich, being very power-ful, was placed in the fireproof ovens.r6 Yet another attemPt tomake Auschwitz unimaginable. After the Liberation, you couldfind yourself in the very place from which the four photographs

I

were snatched a feriv months earlier, and see nothing but ruins,

devastated sites, or "non-places"tt (fig. 8).

Filip Müllea moreover, specified that up to its destruction,

crematorium V continued "burning the corpses of prisoners who

had died in the main and auxiliary camps" while the gassing ofthe

Jews had already been interrupted. Members of the Sonderkom-

manilo then had to burn, under strict surveillance, all "prisoners'

documents, card indexes, death certificates, and scores ofotherdocuments.ts" It was w'ith the tools of obliterationth¿t arcbittes-

tbe memory of tbe obliteration-bad to be obliterated- It was a way ofkeeping the obliteration forever inits unimaginable cor-.diúon.

There is a perfect coherence between Goebbels's discourse,

anelyzedinrg4zby Hannah Arendt according to its central mo-

n other words, we will murder

ä:i::i'-."";i;ff;'Jl;i,1i:the end of the war. Indeed "the forgetting of the extermination

is part of the extermination."20 The Nazis no doubt believed they

were making the Jews invisible, and making their very destruc-

tion invisible . They took such pains in this endeavor that many of

I rmlses rìt sPtTE oF ALtÂElr!¡sr lrt uttmle nlnlr ]

their victims believed it too, and many people still do today.2' But"reason in history" is always subjected to the refutation-how-ever minor, however dispersed, however unconscious, or however

desperate it be-ofparticular facts that ¡emain most Precious tomemory its imaginable possibility. The archives ofthe Shoah de-

fine what is certainly an incomplete, fragmentary territory-buta territory that has survived and truly exists.2z

tlPhotograph¡ from this angle, shows a particular ability-illus-trated by certain well- or lesser-known examples23-to curb thefiercest will to obliterate. It is technically very easy to take a pho-tograph. It can be done for so many different reasons, good or bad,

public or private, admitted or concealed, as the ective extension

of violence or in protest against it, and so on. A simple piece offilm-so small that it can be hidden in a tube of toothpaste-iscapable of engendering an unlimited number of prints, of gen-

ofthe prisoners.What do we mean when we refer to "Reason in history"? It is

the state secret decreed at the place where the mass extermina-tion occured. It is the absolute prohibition ofphotographing theEinsatzgruppez's enormous acts of abuse in r94r.2s It is the notices

put up on the walls and fences around the camps: "Fotograferen

verboten! No entry! You will be shot without prior warning!"2ó

It is the circular sent around by Rudolf Höss, the commander at

Auschwitz, dated February 2,Lg+): "I would like to point out once

again that taking photographs within the camp limits is forbid-den. I will be very strict in treating those who refuse to obey this

orderl'z7

But to prohibitwas to want to stoP an epidemic ofimages thathad already begun and that could not stop. Its movement seems as

sovereign as that of an unconscious desire. The ruse of the imageFigure 8. Anonymous (Russian). Ruins of crematorium V of Auschwitz, 1945'

r94ó. Oswiecim, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (negative no' 9o8)'

2)

versus reason in history: photographs circulated everywhere-those images in Eite of all-for the best and the \Morst reasons.

They began with the ghastþ shots ofthe massacres committed bythe Eínsøtzgruþþen, photographs generally taken by the murder-ers themselyes.'8 Rudolf Höss did not hesitate either, in spite ofhis own circular, to present Otto Thierack, the minister ofjustice,with an album of photographs taken at Auschwitz.2e On the onehand, this use ofphotographyverged on a pornography ofkilling.On the other hand, the Nazi administration was so anchored in itshabits ofrecording-with its pride, its bureaucratic narcissism-that it tended to register and photograph everything that wasdone in the camp, even though the gassing of the Jews remaineda'state secret."

Two photography laboratories, no less, were in operation atAuschwitz. It seems astonishing in such a place. However, every-thing can be expected from a capital as complex as Auschwitz,even if it was the capital of the execution and obliteration of hu-man beings by the millions. In the first laboratory attached to the"identification service" (Erkennungsdienø), ten to rwelve prisonersworked permanendy under the direction of SS officers BernhardtWalter and Ernst Hofrnann, suggesting en intense production ofimages here. These consisted mainly ofdescriptive portraits ofpo-litical prisoners. Photos ofexecutions, ofpeople being tornrred, orofcharred bodies were shot and developed by SS members them-selves. The second laboratory which was smaller, was the "office

of constructions" (Zentralbøuleitung). Opened at the end of r94ror the beginningof ry4z,it was directed by the SS officer DietrichKamann, who put together an entire photographic archive on the

il ,the whole "medical" ico-

ll sbyJosefMengeleandhisi I dren ofAuschwitz.3t

Toward the end of the war, while the Nazis were burning thearchives en masse, the prisoners who served them as slaves for thattask availed themselves of the general confusion to save-to di-vert, hide, disperse-as manyimages as theycould. Toda¡ aroundforry thousand photographs ofthis documentation of Auschwitz

I rule rs ril sPrrE or Arr AGArl{ST Arr Uf{rMAGlilABtE ]

remain, despite its systemetic destruction. Their survival says

much about the probable size and horror ofthe iconography thatfilled the files when the camp was in operation.32

tlA single look at thts remnant of images, or erratic corpus of imøges

in Eíte of all, is enough to sense that Auschwitz can no longer be

spoken of in those absolute terms-generally well intentioned,apperently philosophical, but ectually lazyrr- "ntttayable" and"unimaginable." The four photographs taken in August Lg4-4by

the members of the Sonderkommøndo eddress the unimaginablewith which the Shoah is so often credited today-and this is thesecond period ofit. Auschwitz has

shown that it is ppersist in our thought or, rather, give it a new turn. So, ifwe say

that Auschwitz exceeds any existing juridical thought, any notionbe re-eds allust re-

think the very foundations ofthe human sciences as such.3s

The historian's role is, of course, crucial to this task. Histori-ans cannot and must not "accept that the problem posed by thegenocide ofthe Jews be neglected by relegating it to the unthink-able. [The genocide] was thought, it was therefore thinkable."3ó

This is also the direction taken by Primo Levi in his criticism ofthe speculations on the "incommunicability" ofthe concentration

camp testimony.3T The very existenc-e and the possibility of such

testimony-its enunc'íation ín Eite of øll-rcfute the grand idea,

the closed notion, ofan ansayble Lrischwitz. It is to the very core

of speech that testimõày invites us, compelling us to work there.

It is harsh work, since what it concerns is a description of deathat work, with the inarticulate cries and the silences that are im-plied.38 To speak of Auschwitz in terms ofthe unsayable, is not tobring oneself closer to Auschwitz. On the contrary it is to relegate

)

26

Auschwitz to a region that Giorgio Agamben has very well defined

in terms of mystical adoration, even of unknowing repetition ofthe Nazi drcdnum itself.3e

We must do with the image what we already do more easily

(Foucault has helped us here) with language. For in each testimo-nial production, in each act of memory language and image are

absolutely bound to one another, never ceasing to exchange theirreciprocal lacunae. An image often appears where a word seems tofail; a word often appears where the imagination seems to fail. The

itheror ofsuch

an experience becomes all the more necessary. Ifthe terror ofthecamps functions as an enterprise ofgeneralized obliteration, theneach aþparítioz-however fragmentary however difficult to lookat and to interpre ofthis enterqrise is visu-

ally suggested to necessary.n' ../The discourse rwo diffint and rigor-

ously symmetrical modes. The one proceeds from an aestbeticism

that often fails to recognize history in its concrete singularities.The other proceeds from a historicism thet often fails to recognize

the image in its formal specificities. Examples abound. In particu-lar, we will note that certain important works of art have caused

their commentators to give misleading generalizations on the"invisibility" of the genocide. Thus, the formal choices of Sboab,

the film by Claude Lanzmann, have served as alibis for a wholediscourse (as moral as it was aesthetic) on the unrepresentable,the unfigurable, the invisible, the unimaginable, and so on.a2 Yet

these formal choices were specific and therefore relative: they lay

down no rule. Avoiding the use of even a single "document fromthe period," the film Sboøb precludes any peremptory judgment

on the status of photographic archives in general.a3 What it offers

instead is an impressive sequence-over ten hours-ofvisual and

sound images, offilmed faces, words, and places, all composed ac-

cording to formal choices and an extreme engegement with thequestion of the fgurab I e.e

I rmlers ril sPITE ot att ÀGAlilST ALr UiilMAG|!¡ABLE ]

In turn, both the Dachau-Proje,år ofJochen Gerz and his invis-

ible Monument against Rncism in Sarrebrück gave rise to numerous

commentaries on the Shoah in general: "The Shoah was and re-

mains without images," writes Gérard Wajcman; it is even some-

thing both "without visible trace and unimaginable"; "the invis-ible and unthinkable object par excellence"; the "production ofan Unrepresentable"; an "absolute disaster that absolutely cannot

be looked at"; a "destruction with no ruins"; "beyond imaginationand on the side ofmemory"; therefore "a thing unlooked ¿¡"-¡ethe extent that the "absence ofany image ofthe gas chambers"as is

impressed upon us. Do the two poor images framed by the door ofthenotcouby any thought, however just, on the exercise of art? "There is a

limit at which the exercise of an art, whatever it be, becomes an

insultto misfortune," writes Maurice Blanchot 6 -7

tlIt is highly significant that Blanchot, a thinker pJ. ."..11.n.. ofnegatiyity

-relentless, without synthesis-in fact did not speak

of Auschwitz under the absolute authority of the unimaginableor the invisible. On the contrary in the camps, he wrote, it was

the "invisible fthat] was forever rendered visiblel'+7 How should we

think this paradox? Georges Bataille can help us, he who never

feared to interrogate the silence addressed sparingly by Sartre inhis Réflexions sur Iø question juirøwith respect to the gas chambers.ns

Bataille, then-the thinker par excellence ofthe formless-speaksof Auschwitz in terms of the similar, thefellow buman:

In being a man, there is generally an oppressive, sickly ele-

ment, which must be overcome. But this weight and this

repugnence were never as heavy as they have become since

Auschwitz. Like you and me, those responsible for Auschwitz

had nostrils, a mouth, a voice, human reason, they could

28

unite, could have children. Like the Pyramids or the Acropo-lis, Auschwitz is the fact, the sign ofman. The image ofman is

inseparable, henceforth, from a gas chamber . . .ae

must be considered with the anthropological fact-the fact aboutthe human race, es Robert Antelme wrote in the same yearso-thatit is a haman beíng who inflicts torture, disfiguration, and deathupon his fellow human being lsembløble): "We are not only poten-tial victims of the executioners: the executioners are our fellows

ylsemblablesl."sr Bataille, the thinker par excellence of the impos-

I sible, well understood that we must speak of the camps as of thei posibte itself, the "possible of Auschwitz," as he specified.sz To say

this does not amount to making horror banal. On the contrary itengages with the concentration camp experience summarized byHermann Langbein:

No single criterion ofnormal life applied to the exterminationcamps. Auschwitz \ ¡as the gas chambers, the selections, the

processions ofhuman beings going to death like puppets, theblack wall and its trails of blood in the camp's roadway mark-ing the path ofthe vehicles which transported the executed tothe crematorium, the anonymity of death which let no martyr

shine, the booze-ups of the prisoners with their guards. [. . .]

In Auschwitz, the spectacle of the prisoners dying from star-

vation was as habitual as the sight of the well-fe d Kapos. l. . .lNothing was inconceivable in Auschwitz. Everything was pos-

sible, literally everything.s3

If Bataille's thought is so close to thisterrtble buman possibilitl,itisbecause he knew from the start how to formulate the indissolublelink between the image (the production of the similar) and theaggression (the destruction of the similar).sa In a story written inthe midst ofthe war, Bataille had imagined a cruel world where, he

said, "death itselfwas part of the feast."ss Throughout the stories

I tmle rs ril sPrTE oF Au.AGAtl{ST At-t Ut¡tMAGtl{rBrE ]

of Auschwitz survivors, we access the real of an infinitely worse

cruelty, one in which, I contend, it was possible that tbefeast itselfwøs þart of deøtb:

One evening toward the end of February lrg++], I was onnight-shift. When our teem arrived at crematorium 5 a fewhundred corpses were lying in the changing room, about

to be cremated. In the Kommandofíihrer's office, which was

connected with the cremation room by a door, a paffy was

in full swing. Kommandoftibrer Johann Gorges had been pro-moted from Rottenfibrer to Unterscbarfì'ibrer. l. ..] The longtable in the Kommandofibreìs office was spread with delica-

cies from all over the world. There were tinned foods, coldmeats, cheese, olives, sardines, and other dainties, all taken,needless to say, from deportees. There was also Polish vodka

to wash them down and ample supplies of cigarettes. Abouta dozen SS-Unterfübrer had come to the crematorium to cel-

ebrate Gorges'promotion. They sat around the table eating

and drinking. One ofthem had brought his accordion and was

plaFng folk and pop songs with the others joining in. They

told each other blue jokes and as the hour advanced, the mood

grew increasingly genial. [. . .] From the cremation chamber

came the noise of fans humming, Køþos shouting and stokers

stoking the corpses inside the ovens with their iron forks.só

29

rBz

in the case ofthe honest soul, and the language conveying itsmeaning is, therefore, full of esprit and wit (geistreicb).tts

We should understand this "perversion" in rhe sense of the Latinperversio; that is, the act of disrupting, of deliberately puttingthings back to front, as the Histoireþ) du cinámø does with historyin general. Let us understand the concept that "brings together

[ . . . ] thoughts that lie far apart" as an acriviry of monrage, as,

for example, when Godard asks us to bring rogether in our mindan allegory of Goya, a victim of Dachau, a Hollywood star, and a

gesture in a Giotto painting (fr,gs.za-z).This "torn consciousness" was often claimed or observed by

Jewish thinkers who survived the Shoah, from Cassirer or ErnsrBloch to Stefan Zweigor Kracauer. At the end of his workWeltge-scbichte und Heikge scb ehen lMe aning in Historyl, KarlLöwith notedthe fundamental "indecision" ofwhat he called "the modern spirit"in its relation to history.rra Hannah Arendt went fufther in heranalysis ofthis historical tearing: on rhe one hand, she placed theartist, the poet, and the historian together as "builders of monu-ments" without whom "the history that mortals play and recountwould.not survive an instant."lls On the other hand, citing RenéChar-"Our heritage is not preceded by any tesrament"-A¡endtobserves the difficulty in our time of naming its own "lost trea-sure." The "breach between the past and the future," as she calls it,resides entirely in the impossibility ofrecognizing and of bringinginto þlay the heritage ofwhich we have become guardians:

It seems then that no single continuiry in time is assigned,and that consequently there is, humanly speaking, no pesrnor future.lró

The question of images is at the he art of the great darkness of ourtime, the "discontent of our civilization." We must know how tolook into images to see that of which they are survivors. So thathistory liberated from the pure past (that absolute, rhar abstrac-tion), might help us to open the present oftime.

(zooz-zoo3)

I rH setrr ttF THE Ar.r. TMAGE

t\l OTES

For exþlønøtion ofasteisk (*) following certain references, see Transløtor's Note, p. xi.

Four Pieces of Film Snatched from Hell

r. And with them, all the sophisms regarding which, I believe, thereare no grounds for philosophical ecstasies. See J.-F. Lyotzrd, Le diférend(Paris: Minuit, t983) , ß -r7 , analyzing in this form the negationist argu-

ment: "In order to identifr that a place is a gas chamber, I will accept as

witness only a victim ofthis gas chamber; but, there must be, accordingto my adversary no victim other than a dead one, or else this gas chamber

would not be what it purports to be; there is therefore no gas chamber."

z. P. Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. R Rosenthal (New York:Vintage Books 1989), 52.

3.Ibid.,5o.4. F. Mùllea Eyewitness Auscbwitz: Three Years in tbe Gas Chamber¡trans.

S. Flateuer (New York: Stein and Day, r97 ù, 1¡g. Filip Müller represents theextremely rare case of a member of the Sonderkommando who escaped five

successive liquidations. On this function and its secrecy, See G. Wellers,

Les cbambres à gaz ont eristé: Des documents, des témoignages, des cbffies (Patis;

Gallimard, rg8r). E. Kogon, H. Langbein, and A. Rückerl, Les cbambres à

gaz secret d'État $9$), trans. H. Rollet (Paris: Minuit, r9B4; reprinted Paris

Le Seuil, ryB).1.-C.Pressac,Auscbwitz: Tecbnique and Operation of tbe Gas

Cbambers,trans. P. Moss (NewYork: Beate Klarfeld Foundation, r9B9). Id.,Les crématoires d'Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse (Paris: CNRS

Editions, ryy); (p.75: "To kill men by the hundreds by gas with one go,

and in an enclosed space, was without precedent, and the secret in whichthe operation was wrapped struck even more the imaginetion ofthenonparticipants, SS or prisoners, who had received the formal interdic-tion against observing its working"). U. D. Adam, "Les chambres àgaz,"

L'Allemagne nazie et le génocide juf: Colloque à I'EHESS, Paris, juillet ry82(Paris: Gallimard-Le Seuil, ry9),216-26r. F. Pipea "Gas Chambers and

Crematoria," inAnatoml of tbe AuscbwitzDeath Camþ, ed. Y. Gutman and

M. Berenbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), ¡57-rïz.

rB4

5. H. Langbein ,.Hommes etfemmes à Aascbwitz (1975) , trans. D. Meu¡ier(Paris: UGE, ry94),zoz-

6. ÌMiiller, Elewitness Auscbwitz-Latgbein, Hommes etfemmes àAuschwitz, Lgt-zoz.

T.Langbein, Hommes etfemmes à Auschwitz, r93."B. Ibid., tg4-195.*

9. Levi, Tbe Drowned and tbe Sawd,59. "No one has the right to judgethem, not those who experienced the camps, and even less those who didnot."

ro. G. Agamben, Remnants ofAuscbwitz: Tbe Witness and tbe Archiye,Homo Sacer III, rrans. D. Heller-Roazen (Newyork Zone Books, zooz).

rr. Müllea Eyewitness Auscbwif2. The documentation on the .effects ofthe revolt has been gathered by Pressac, Les cténatoires d,Auscbwitz, 93. Onthe public execution of the last rebels, see p. Levi, Si c'est un bomme, îans.M. Schruoffeneger (Paris: Julliard, r9B7; Lg% edj, ry9-r6l.

rz. Müller, Eyewitness Auscbwitz, Bz.

9.Ibid.,nz14. See L. Poliakov, Auscbwitz (parís:Julliard, t964),62-65 andry9-

r7r.B-Mark, Des yoix dans lø nait: La résistance juiue à Aascbwitz-Birkenau(1965), trans. E. and J. Fridman and L. Princet (paris: plon, rggz). N. Co-hen, "Diaries of the Sonderkommøndol' in Anatoml of tbe AascÍtwitz DeatbCamp,5z2-5)+.. - r5. On the physical description ofthe Srro lls ofAuscbwitzravaged byhumidity and therefore partially illegibte, see Mark, Des yoix dans la nuit,179-Lgo.

ró. Cited by Langbein, Hommes etfemnes à Auscbwitz, 3."17. A. 'Wieviorka, Déportation et génocide: Entre la mémoire et I'oubli

(Paris: Plon, Lggz; L995 ed.), 255- 259.

rB. Pressac, I¿s crématoires d'Auschwitz, go.r9.Ibid.,9rzo. MíIIer, E1 ew itn e s s Au s c b w itz, tz 4.zr. Ibid., rz5.

zz.Ibid.,o4-:176.

4.The documentation on crematorium V can be found inJ.-C. pres-

sac, "Érude et réalisation d es KrematorienlV et V d'Auschwitz-Birkenau,"in L' AI le magn e nazie e t le géno cide j af, 99 - 58 4. Id., Au s chw itz : Te cbniqueand Operation . . . , j7g-428. Léon Poliakov (Auschwitz,5r-52) had alreadycited a letter from November 6,ry43,tnwhtch the SS ofAuschwirz orderedgreen plants for the camouflage of crematoria I arrd II. OnJun e :16,:1944, Os-wald Pohl was still putting aside a sum for "the erecting of a second interiorhedge, in order to hide the buildings from the prisoners." pr ess¿c, Les caéma-

I rorrs Ttl pAGEs 4-s !¡oTES T0 PAcES s-17 ]

toíres d'Auschwitz, gt. Onthe subject ofthe camouflage of the "communica-

tion trench" ofTieblinka, see SS Franz Suchomel's very precise testimony,gathered by C. Lanzmann in Sboab (Paris: Fayard, ry85), n3-n4

24. Testimony by Filip Mùller cited in ibid. He conrinues: "We werehenceforth the'bearers ofthe secret,'the condemned.'We ìvere not tospeak to anyone, not to come into contact with any prisoner. Not evenwith the SS. Except those rher were in charge of the Aktion!'*

25. Millle;" Ey ewitness Aascbwitz, r33.

z6.Ibid.,¡'6-ry9. See also, among orhers, the testimony of G. Wellers,L'étoilejaune à l'beure de Vícb1. De Drancl à Auscbwitz (Paris: Fayard, 1973) ,

z86-287. Kogon, Langbein, and Rückerl, I es cbambres à gøz secret d'État,214-2L5, specifies that the pits were rz meters in lengrh, 6 meters wide,and r.5 meters deep. One thousand people were burned there in one hour.See also Pressac, "Étude et réalisation des Krematorien N etYl' 99- 584.A discrepancy remains between certain testimonies of the members ofthe Sonderkommøndo endPressac's analyses on the question ofknowingwhether the pits were dug because the ovens of crematorium V were notworking or were too full.

zT.H.Langbei¡, La résistance dans les camps de concentration nationaux-socialistes, ryj8-t945 $98o),trans. D. Meunier (Paris: Fayard, ryBl,z97(and passim, 2g7- 1.t5).

zB. Langbein, Ilo mrnes et femme s d'Auschwitz, 253: "stanlislaw Klodzin-ski claimed that a Polish civilian worker called Mordarski, whose workyard was not far awa¡ smuggled a camera into rhe camp. Hidden deepwithin the false bottom ofa tub ofsoup, it passed into the hands oftheSonderkonmanlo." Since Langbein's reconstitution is not without inaccu-racies, we can also speculate that the camera might have been obtained inthe "Canada" section of Auschwitz, the gigantic storehouse ofthe victims'stolen personal effects.

29. See Pressac, Auscbwitz: Tecbnique and Operation . . . , 4zz-4z4,whercwe find a minutely detailed reconsrirution ofthese images. He specifiesthat among the people photographed is an SS member, whose back isturned (we understand, therefore, even more clearly the risk taken).

3o. Levi, Tbe Drowned and the Saued,79.

3r. See Pressac, Auscbwitz: Technique and Operation .. . ,424, in whichthe testimony of Szmulewski himself-survivor ofthe squad-is cited.

32. See Langben, Hommes etfemmes à Auscbwitz,253.

33. Cited and translated by R Boguslawska-Swiebocka and T. Ce-glowske, IJ- Aascbwitz: Fotografe dokumentølne (Warsaw: Kraiowa AgencjaWydawnicza rg8o), rz. The code name "Tell" belongs to Teresa Lasocka-Estreicher, a member, in Krakow, ofa clandestine commitee of aid to the

rB5

186

prisoners in concentration camps. See also R Boguslawska and T. Swie-

bocka, 'Auschwitz in Documentary Photographs," trans. J. 'ù/ebberand C. Wilsack, ín Auschwitz: A History in Photogrøphs, ed. T. Swiebocka

(Oswiecim, Warsaw, and Bloomington: Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum,Ksiazka I Wiedza, and Indiana University Prcss, 1993), 4z-47 zndt7z-r76, in which the names of other prisoners who took part in this op-eration are specified: Szlomo Dragon, his brother Josek, and Alter Szmul

Fajnzylberg (known in the camp under the name of StanislawJankowski).According to the testimony of Alter Fainzylberg, the camera could have

been a Leica (Clément Chéroux has told me that this is impossible, since

the format of the images is 6 x 6).

Against All Unimaginable

r. See H. Arendt, "Le procès d'Auschwitz" (r9óó), trans. S. Courtine-Denam¡ in Auscbwitz et Jérusalem (Paris: Deuxtemps Tierce, LggL; LggT

ed.),275.*

z. See R A¡on, Mémoire s (Paris: Julliard, ry83), ry 6:'About the geno-

cide, what do we know about that in London? On the level of clear

conscience, my perception was roughly the following: the concentrationcamps were cruel, directed by martinets recruited not among the politi-cally minded, but rather among commonlaw criminals; mortality therewas high, but the gas chambers, the industrial murder ofhumans, no,

I must admit, I did not imagine them, and because I could not imaginethem, I did not know about them [je ne les ai pas sus]!'

3. H. Arendt, "Les techniques de la science sociale et l'étude des camps

de concentration" (r95o), trans. S. Courtine-Denzmy,inAuscbwitz et

Jérusalem, zo7.*

4. Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, u-rz. See also the narrative ofMoché{e-Bedeau with which E. Wiesel's b ook, La nuit (París; Minrljlt,1958. r7-rB) pracically begins.

5. Testimony by Simon Wiesenthal, cited by Levi itTbe Drowned and

tba Søt¡ed, rr-tz.6. See W. Laqreur, Le terr'fiant secret. La 'Solutionfnale" et I'information

étoufre (r9Bo), trans. A. Roubichou-Stretz (Paris: Gallimard, rgBr).

S. Courtois and A. Rayski, eds., Qui savait quoi? L'exterminøtion des jufs,1941-i945 (Paris: La Découverte, ry87),7 -:.6 ("Stratégie du secret, straté-

gie de I'information").

T.Lzquerr, Le terr'fiant secret, z3B.

8. H. A¡endt, "Léloquence du diable" j94z),trerns. S. Courtine-Denam¡ in Auschwitz et Jérusalem, ))-)4.*

I norrs To PAGES rs-zo il0TES T0 PAÊES 2o-22 ]

9. B. Bettelheim, "Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situa-tions" (1943), in Surviu ing an d O th er E s s ay (New York Alfred A. fnopf,ry7ù,8J.

ro. Arendt, "Les techniques de la science sociale et l'étude des camps

de concentration]' ztz. The "saved" themselves often referred to thecamps as "laboratories": see Levi, Si c'est un bomme,93. D. Rousset,

L'uniuers concentrøtionnaire (1945; Paris: Minuit, r9ó5), ro7-ru. See

W. Soßþ's study, L'organisation de la terreur: les camþs de concentration

$997),trad. O. Mannoni (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1995), passim.

rr. Levi, Tbe Drowned and tbe Sa'tted,97.

rz. See Langbeit, Hommes etfemmes à Auschwitz, tt-r7.13. See V. I{7empercr, LTI, la løngue du IIIe Reícb, Carnets d'un pbilologue

$947),trans. E. Guillot (Paris: Albin Michel, r99ó).14. See Pressac, Auscbwitz: Tecbnique and oþeration . . . ,446. This is a

double slip in fact, since the SS wrote Gasskammer irtstead ol Gaskammer.

See also Kogon, Langbein, and Rückerl, I es cbambres à gaz senet d'État,13-23 ("Un langage codé").

r5. See in particular Poliakov, Auscbwitz, 49- 52.See also, among orherexamples, Y. A¡ad, "Tieblinka," trans. J. Betson, La déportation: Le système

concentrationnaire nazi, ed. F. Bédarida and F. Gervereau (Nanterre, BDIC,

ry95), ry4: "End of February beginning of March 1943, Heinrich Himmlervisited Tieblinka. Following this visit, in accordance with his orders, an

operation was launched to incinerate the bodies ofthe victims. The com-mon graves were reopened, and the corpses were taken out so that theycould be incinerated in enormous furnaces (the "pyres"). The bones wereground and buried again in the same graves, with the ashes. This incinera-tion ofthe corpses, in order to make all traces ofthe murders disappear,continued intoJ,iy r9q!'On the subject ofthis episode, see the bothtechnical and unbearable testimony ofSS Franz Suchomel, gathered byLanzmann, Shoah,64-7o. There it is specified that the Sonderkommando ofTreblinka was changed-i.e., murdered-every day.

16. See Pressac, Auscbwitz: Technique ønd Operation . . . , )go-)gu.17. This makes the stricùy archeological approach ofthe work under-

taken by Pressac all the more precious-and ro which P. Vidal-Naquetpaid hommage in "Sur une interprétation dugrand massacre: Arno Mayeret la 'solution finale"' (r99o), in Les Jufs, la mémoire et le þrésent,Il (Paris:

La Découverte,ry9r),z6z-266. On the question ofthe "ruined" place andof its use (equally archeological) in the film .låo ab, see G. Didi-Huberman,"Le lieu malgré tout" (1995), in Phasmes: Essais sur l'apparition (Paris:Minuit, r99B), zzï - z4z.

rB. Müllea Eyawitness Auscbwitz, t6t -t62.

LB7

1BB

19. Arendt, "On ne prononcera pas le kaddish" (1942), trans. S. Courtine-Denam¡ it Auscbwitz et Jérusalem, 79 - 4t.

zo.J.-L. Godard, Histoireþ) du cinéma (Paris : Gallimard-Gaumont,r99B), I, ro9.

zr. See the despairing testimony of the Jewish historian Itzhak Schip-

per, just before being deported to Majdanek: "History is written, ingeneral, by the victors. All that we know about murdered peoples is thatwhich their murderers were willing to say about it. If our enemies win, ifit is they who write the history of this war [. . .] they can decide to erase

us completely from world memory as though we never existed." Cited bykBrtel, Dans la langue ile personne: Poésie lddisb de l'anéantissement (Paris:

Le Seuil, L9%),4. See also S. Felman's theses in'À l'âge du témoignage:

Sboab de Claude Lanzmann," trans. C. Lanzmann andJ. Ertel, ínAa sujet de

Sloah,leflm ile Claude Lanzmann (Paris, Belin, r99o), 55-145.zz.This also allowed for the precise reconstitution ofthe extermina-

tion machine in the crucial work ofR Hilberg, Tbe Destruction of tbe Euro'

þean Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, r9ór). See, more recend¡ J. Fredi,ed., Les arcbives de la Sboab (Paris: CDJCJ'Harmattan, 1998).

23. See the important bibliography by U. Wrockhge, Fotografe und

Holocaust: Annotierte BibliograPbie (Frankfvt: Fritz Bauer Institut, r99B).

Among the principal studies, see Boguslawska-Swiebocka and Ce-

glowska, IJ- Aascbwitz. Sv¡iebocka, ed., Auscbwitz: A History in Pbotograpbs.

S. Milton, "Images of the Holocaustl' Holocaust and Genocide Studies t(1986), no. rz7 - 6t, no. z:r91 - 2i:6. D. Hoftnann, "Fotografi erte Lager:

Überlegungen zu einer Fotogeschichte deutscher Konzentrationslager,"Fotogescbicbte, no. 54 $994):3-zo. It is worth noting the exceptional case

of the 'Auschwitz Album": P.HelIman, L'album d'Auschwitz: D'øprès un

album ilécoavert par Lili Meier, surviuante du camþ de concentration $981,trans. G. Casaril, completed by A. Freyer and J.-C. Pressac (Paris: Le Seuil,

19B3).

24. See G. Didí-Huberman, Ménorøndum de la þeste: Leféau d'imaginer

(P ar i s: Chrístízn Bourgois, r983).

25. See Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, zr4, n.r4o: "[Hey-drich] forbade his own men to take pictures. 'Official'photographs were

to be sent undeveloped to the RSHA IV-A-I as secret Reich matter (Ga-

heime Reichssaclte). Heydrich dso requested the Order Police commands tohunt up photographs which might have been circulating in their areas."

26. Inscription on a warning sign placed around the Natzweiler camp.

27. Citedby Boguslawska-Swiebocka and Ceglowska, IC,4 uscbwitz, rr.28. See the exhibition entidedVernicbtangskrieg: Verbrecben dn

Wehrmacht ry4t bis ry44 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996; rev. ed.,

I Hores Ttl PAGEs zz-24 t{0TES T0 PÂGES 24-25 ]

Verbrecben der Webrmacbt: Dimensionen dcs Vernichtungskriege s ry41 - 1944(Hamburg, Hamburger Edition zooz).

29. See Hilberg, Tbe Destruction of tbe European Jews.3o. See Boguslawska-Swiebocka and Swiebocka,'Auschwitz in Docu-

mentary Photographs," J5- 4z.tJ. Wrocklage, "Architektur zur .Vernich-

tung durch Arbeit': Das Album der 'Bauleitung d. Waffen-SS u. polizeiK. L. Auschwitzj" Fotogæchichte,no.54 $994):3t-47. This archive oftheBauleitungisthe main source for Pressac's works Auschwitz: Technique andOperøtion . . . , and Les crématoires d'Auscbwitz.Itmrstbe pointed out that,ofthe 4o,ooo phoros conserved, 39,ooo are identification photographs.

3r. See R J. Lifton, Tlte Nazi Doctors: Medical Kilting and tbe psycbotog ofGenocide (NewYork Basic Books, 1986).

32. See Boguslawska-Swiebocka and C egow ska, I{L Aus c bw itz, :rz,

where Bronislaw Jureczek's testimony is cited: "Almost at the very lastmoment we were told to burn all the negatives and photographs kept inthe Erkennungsdiensf. There was a coal srove in the laboratory into whichwe first began ro put wet photographic paper and pictures, end thenloads ofphotos and negatives. The enormous amount ofmaterial shovedinto the stove closed offthe chimney. When we set the material afire,we were convinced that only a part ofthe photos and negetives near theopening would burn, and that the remaining part would not, as rhe firewould die out for lack of air. After the war I found our rher our inren-tions were carried out, and at least a large percentage ofthe photos andnegatives fell inro rhe hands ofthe right people. [. . .] We deliberatelyscattered some of the pictures and negatives in the rooms ofthe labora-tory faking nervousness. I knew that the evacuation was being carriedout in such a hurry that no one would have time to clean away everything,and that somethingwould survive."

33. See Wieviorka, Déþortation et génocide, ró5: 'As a historical matter,the notion ofthe unsayable seems a lazy notion. It has exonerated the his-torian from his task which is precisely to read the prisoners' restimonies,to examine this major source for the history ofthe deportation, includ-ing even its silences"-and I would add, for my part: including even itslmeges.

34. See H. Arendt, "Limage de I'enfer" (1946), trans. S. Courrine-Denamy, inAuscbwitz et Jérusalem, r5z. Id. "Le procès d'Auschwitz,"zj3-259. These thoughts are taken up by G. Agamben in,,eu'est-ce qu'uncamp?" (1995), trans. D. Valin, ín Moyns sansfns: Notes sar la politiqae(Paris: Rivages , rg95) , 47 - 56.

35. SeeArendt, "Limage de l'enfer," r5z -rg.Id,"Les techniques de lascience sociale et l'étude des camps de concentrati onj' zo1-zrg.

rB9

190

3ó. P. Vidal-Naquet, "Préfece" to G. Decrop , Des camþs au génocide: Lapolitique de l'impensable (Grenoble: Presses universitaires, 199), 7.

37.Leví,The Ðrowned andthe Sat¡ed, BB-ro4. On Levi's-exaggerat-ed-critiques regarding the "obscuriry" of Paul Celan, see E. Tiaverso,L'Histoire décbirée: Essai sur Aaschwitz et les intellectuels (Paris: Le Cerf,

ryg7),n. C. Mouchard, "'Ici'?'Maintenant'? Témoignages et æuwes," inLa Sboab: Témoignages, sauoirs, eanres, ed. C. Mouchard and A. Wieviorka(Saint-Denis, Presses universitaires de Vincennes-Cercll, ry99), zz5-26o.F. Carasso, "Primo Levi, le parti pris de la clarté," in ibid., z7t-zïr.

38. On testimon¡ Se e Wieviorkz, Déportation et génocide, rór-róó. Id.L'ère du témoin (París: Plon, r99B).

39. See Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz,3z-33, andt57: "But why un-sayable? Why confer on extermination the prestige ofthe mystical? [. . .]To say that Auschwitz is "unsayable" or "incomprehensible" is equivalentto eupbemein, to adoring in silence, as one does with a god. [. . .] That iswhy those who assert the uûsayabiliry of Auschwitz today should be morecautious in their statements. If they mean to sey that Auschwitz was a

unique event in the face ofwhich the witness must in some way submithis every word to the test of an impossibility of speaking, they are right.But iC joining uniqueness to unsayabiliry, they transform Auschwitz intoa reality absolutely seperate from language [. . .], then they unconsciouslyrepeat the Nazis' gesture; they are in secret solidarity withthe arcanam

imperiï'

4o. Here, in my opinion, is a limit in the important reflections ofAgamben, ibid., rz and 5r: "Truth is [. . .] unimaginable [. . .] but the sightof Muselrncinner is an absolutely new phenomenon, unbearable to humaneyes." To speak in these terms amounts to, among other things, ignor-ing the whole photographic production ofEric Schwab: aJew, who was

captured by the Germans but escaped after six weeks ofimprisonment,Schwab followed the advance ofthe American army in 1945, discover-ing the camps ofBuchenwald and Dachau (among others). He was as yetunaware ofwhat had become ofhis ovin mother, who had been deportedto Theresienstadt. It was in these conditions that he took photographs-which were obviously empathetic, unforgettable in any case-ofMuselmtinner, those living cadavers upon whom he w¿s able to gaze, nodoubt seeing his own fate as the fate of his people. I owe this informationabout Schwab, including some others in this text, to the remarkable pre-paratory work of Clément Chéroux for the exhibition entiúedMémoiredes camþs: Pbotograpbies des camps de concentration et d'extermination nazis

ftSlS -tggg) (Paris: Marval, zoor). I thank him very warmly.

4r. Regarding the Auscbwitz Album, SergeKTarsfeld writes: "And I said

I norrs To PAGEs zb-26 f{oTEs T0 PAGES 2s-2s ]

to them [those in charge ofthe memorial ofYadVashem], when, in r98o,I gave them this album, which originally belonged to an ex-prisoner:'One da¡ later, it will be like the Dead Sea Scrolls, because these are theonly authentic photographs ofJews arriving at a concenrrarion cemp."'*Klarsfeld, 'A la recherche du témoignage eurhenrique l' hLa Shoab: Témoi-

gnages, saroirs, Garre s, 5c..

42. See in particular G. Koch, "Transformations esrhériques dans lareprésentation de l'inimaginable" þ98ó), trans. C.'Weinzorn,Aa Sujet de

Shoah, lefln de Claude Lanzmann, y7 -166 ("he refuses any represenrationbyimages. [. . .] Through the absence ofimages, he therebygives a repre-sentetion of the unimaginable.") I. Avisaa Sneening tbe Holocaust: Cinemø'sImages of tbe Unimøginøble (Bloomington: Indiana Universiry Press, r98B).S. Felman, i4,l'âge du témoignage," 55-145. See, on rhe orher hand, thereaction ofAnne-Lise Stern, a survivor ofthe camps: "I can understandShoshana Felman more or less when she speaks ofthe 'rupturing ofthevery act of eyewitness testimony itself' or even her thesis ofthe Holocaustas an 'event without a witness, an event whose historical project is theliteral obliteration ofits witnesses.'At the same rime, I find her absolutelyoutrageous, and I refuse to understand her." A.-L. Stern, "Sois déportée. . . et témoigne! Psychanalyser, témoigner: double-bind?" ít La Sboab, zt.

43. It seems unnecessary here to discuss the unseemly debate betweenClaude Lanzmann andJorge Semprun (see Le monde des débats,May zooo,rr-r5) on the subject ofthe exisrence a¡d use ofa hypothetical archivalfilm about the gas chambers.

44. See Didi-Huberman, "Le lieu maþé tout," zzï-242.45. G. Wajcman, L'objet du siècla (Paris: Verdiea 1998), zr, 27, 236, 239,

244, z+7, z4B, and passim.

4ó. M. Blanchot, L'écriture du désastre (Paris: Gallimard), r98o, r3z.

47.Ibid.,n9.48. G. Bataille, 'Sartre" $9a7) , in Oeatres Complèler, )A (paris: Galli-

mard, 1988), zz6-228. Regarding the context ofthis debate, See Traverso,L Histoire dé cbiré e, zr4 - zt5.

49. Bataille, "S¿rtrel' zz6.

5o. R Antelme , L'espèce bumaine þ947;Pais: Gallimard, 1957).

5r. G. Bataille, *Réflexions sur le bourre au et la victime" $9a) , in

CÛuwes complète s, K, 266.

5z-Ibid.,z67.53. Langbein, Homme s et femmes à Auscbøitz, B7- 88.*

54. See G. Didi-Huberman, Z a ressemblance inþrme, ou le gøi søt oir yisuel

selon Georges Bataille (Peris:Macula, 1995). The link berween the imaginaryand aggression was theorized-very much in the style ofBataille-by

r91

r92

J. Lacan, "Lagressivité en psychanalyse" (1948), in Écrits (Paris: Le Seuil,t966),lr,-n4.

55. G. Bataille, Madame Edwarda $9q),inOeuures complètes,IIl (Pais:Gallimard, ry7r),22.

56. Mí1lIet Ey ewitne ss Auscbwitz, 93- 94.

In the Very Eye of History

r. The drawing by David Olère is reproduced by Pressac in Auschwitz:Technique and Operation . . . , 259. The corpses (in the middle distance),are those ofa transport of French Jews; on rhe rable ofthe SS (in theforeground) the "booty" is spread; packs ofGauloises and bottles ofBor-deaux. On David Olère, see S. Klarsfeld, Dayid Olère, ryoz-t985: Un peintreau Sonderkommando à Auscbwitz (New York Beate Klarsfeld Foundation,1989). On the drawings of the camps, see in particular J. P. Czarne cki, LastTraces: Tbe Lost Art of Auscbwirz (New York, Atheneum, 1989). D. Schul-mann, "D'écrire I'indicible à dessiner I'irreprésentable,"in Face à l'bistoire,toz3-t996: L'artiste moderne de.ttant l'éuénement historiqae, ed. J.-P. Ameline(Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou-Flammarion, r99ó), ry+-$7.

z. Cited by Mark, Des yoix dans la nuit, zo4.*

3. Ibid., 2+5-25t.

4. W. Beniamin, "Sur le concept d'hisroi-r;e" $94o), Écritsfrançais, ed.

J.-M. Monnoyer (Paris: Gallimard, ry9t),346. [Benjamin's articles col-lected in this edition were originally written in French.-Trans.]

5. Arendt, "Le procès d'Auschwitz," 257-258. She then lists a numberofactual situations marked by horror and absurdity. The conclusion ofthe text is as follows: "That is what happens when men decide to rurn rheworld upside down.""

6. Cited by Mark, Des yoix dans la nuit, t94J

7. See M. Frizot, "Faire face, faire signe. La photographie, sa partd'histoire," in Face à l'histoire,5o:"The notion of photography of an eventor photography ofhistory is consrandy ro be reinvented in rhe face ofhis-tory being unforeseeable. [. . .] [But this same] photographic image is animage that is somewhat fore-seenfpré-uuef!'

B. See Wieviorka, L'ère du témoin, t4. See also M. Pollak and N. Heinich,"Le témoignag el' Actes de la rechercbe en sciences sociales, nos. 6z-63 j986):

3-29. Pollak, "Lagestion de I'indicible," ibid.,3o-53.

9. See Levi, Tbe Drowned and Tbe Sayed, n-u.ro. See Wieviorke, Déþortation et génocide, t6t-t66.Id., L'ère du témoín,

rrz and n7,whích does not include photography in the reflecrions ontestlmony.

I rorrs Ttl PAGES zB-32 1ìl0TES T0 PAGES 33-38 ]

rr. The expression is Filip Mùller's, cited by Lanzmann in Sboab, ry9.rz. Bédarida and Gervereau, 'Avant-propo sl' La déportation, B.

r3. Gervereau, "Représenter l'univers concentrationrrzirel' lbid. 244.

Id. "De I'irreprésentable: La déportation' ín Les images qui mentent:

Histoire du ttisual au Æe siècle (Paris: Le Seuil, zooo), zol-zrg. See also

A. Liss, Tresþassíng through Sbadows: Memorl, Photograþb1, and tbe Holocaust

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, r99B). The question has

been explored in more detail by S. Friedlander, ed., Probing tbe Limits ofRepresentation: Nazism and the "Final Solution" (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, r99z).

r4. See Pressac, Auscbwitz: Tecbniqae and Operation . . . ,4zz-424.r5. Langbein, Ilo mm e s et femme s à Au s chwitz, 251.*

16.See Mémoire des camps,86-9r.q. A.Brycht, Excursion: Auschwitz-Birkenau, trans. J.-Y. Erhel (Paris:

Gallimard, ryBo),37,54,79, cited and commented on by Pressac itAusch-witz: Tecbnique and opnation . . . ,4zj-424.

rB. See in particular Boguslawska-Swiebocka and Ceglowska,lØAuscbwítz, r84-r85 (all the photos that have been cropped). Swiebocka,ed., Auscbwitz: A Historl in Pbotograþhs, ryz-ry5 (all the photos thathave been cropped). M. Berenbaum , Tbe World Must Know: Tbe Historlof tbe Holocaast as Told in the United States Holocaast Memoriøl Museum

(Boston: Little, Brown and Compan¡ ry%), g7 (cropped photo) andr5o (photo that has not been cropped). Bédarida and Gervereau, eds., Ladéportation, 59 and 6 (cropped photos). Y. Arad, ed., Tbe Pictorial Hístor1

of tbe Holocausl (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, t99o), z9o-zgr (two croppedphotos).

19. Ifeven Pressac (Aaschwitz: Technique and operation .. . , 4zz) cropsthe photos in a rectangular format, which distorts their original formatof 6 x 6, it is because the negatives themselves have disappeared: all theAuschwitz museum has is a contact print whose surrounds have beenreduced, and even torn (figr. I -+).

zo.Presszc, Auscbwitz: Tecbnique and Oþeration . . . , 4zz.zr. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz.

zz. Ibid.23. Simon Srebnik (survivor of Chelmno), cited by Lanzmann in

Sboab, ß. See also, among the numerous expressions of this responsibil-ity, Antelme, I'espèce hamaine,9.J. Arnéry,Par-delà le nime et le châtiment:

Essai pour surmonter l'insurmontable þ,977), trans. F. Wuilmart (Arles: Actes

Sud, 1995), 68-Zg.Bla¡chot, L'écriture du désøstre, r3r. E. Wiesel, Preface toÌMark, Des yoix dans la nuit,[tr.

24. Cited by Mzrk, Des yoix dans la nuú,3o9.

19)