The Auschwitz photographer - Luca Crippa

Based on the powerful true story of Auschwitz prisoner number 3444 Wilhelm
Brasse, whose
photographs helped to expose the atrocities of the
Holocaust.

'Horror in sharp focus... important, because the world must know.' John Lewis-Stempel, Daily Express
__________

When
Germany invaded Wilhelm Brasse's native Poland in 1939, he was asked to
swear allegiance to Hitler and join the Wehrmacht. He refused. He was
deported to Auschwitz concentration camp as political prisoner number
3444. A trained portrait photographer, he was ordered by the SS to
record the inner workings of the camp. He began by taking identification
photographs of prisoners as they entered the camp, went on to capture
the criminal medical experiments of Josef Mengele, and also recorded
executions. Between 1940 and 1945, Brasse took around 50,000 photographs
of the horror around him. He took them because he had no choice.

Eventually,
Brasse's conscience wouldn't allow him to hide behind his camera. First
he risked his life by joining the camp's Resistance movement, faking
documents for prisoners, trying to smuggle images to the outside world
to reveal what was happening. Then, when Soviet troops finally advanced
on the camp to liberate it, Brasse refused SS orders to destroy his
photographs. 'Because the world must know,' he said.

For readers of The Librarian of Auschwitz and The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz, this powerful true story of hope and courage lies at the very centre of Holocaust history.
__________

'A remarkable tale of survival against the odds... an enthralling book.' The Sydney Morning Herald

'Brasse
has left us with a powerful legacy in images. Because of them
we can
see the victims of the Holocaust as human and not statistics.'
Fergal
Keane