The Fake Photograph Problem
By Udo Walendy
In my book Faked Atrocities (distributed
by the Institute for Historical Reivew, $5.00) I have described
some of the ways in which the German nation is maligned through
the use of forged atrocity photographs. My book deals
comprehensively with this problem, and shows the following:
- How many photos turn up with different captions to suit
the circumstance. The caption can describe a totally
different location, time, and circumstance to another
caption on the same photo published elsewhere.
- How many photos are altered; sometimes with no apparent
reason; such as in regard to garments, hairstyles, facial
expressions. These alterations throw severe doubt on the
origin of the photo itself.
- How many photos are impossible, in that the shadows are
all wrong, or contradictory; or non-existent. Or that the
physical anatomy of the persons portrayed is impossible,
when compared with skeletons. These types of atrocity
pictures are usually paintings or drawings.
- How many atrocity pictures are of Communist origin.
- How many pictures prove nothing at all. For example a
picture of a pile of spectacles, or of false teeth, or of
shaving brushes, could easily be taken in a spectacle
factory, a false teeth factory, or a shaving brush factory.
In the examples I am today presenting, I wish to show some of
the more blatant forgeries. Of course, there were other methods,
besides forged photographs, used for brainwashing the German
people after the war. For a survey of these, students should
refer to my more recent booklet The Methods of
Re-Education (also distributed by IHR, $2.00).
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Mauthausen
|
This was the caption given to this picture in R. Schnabel's Macht
Ohne Moral (Power Without Morals), Roederberg
Publishing, Frankfurt, 1957, page 341.
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Roll Call
|
This is the caption given to the same picture, but minus the
pile of bodies, at the Nürnberg Trials. The photograph appears
twice; once in Vol. 30 page 421, and again in the French
government's submissions as document F321.
It was also reproduced in a number of Communist booklets, such
as Der KZ-Staat (The
Concentration Camp State) by Heinz Kuehnerich, East Berlin,
1960, page 81; and in Vaclav Berdych's Mauthausen,
Prague, 1959.
This photographic fraud is also commented upon by Richard
Harwood in Six Million Lost and Found (previously Did
Six Million Really Die?)
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Thousands of Shoes of
Murdered Prisoners at Auschwitz
The picture appeared with this caption in R.
Schnabel's Macht Ohne Moral (Power
Without Morals), Roederberg Publishing, Frankfurt, 1957,
page 244.
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| This picture appeared with no
caption at all in The Lublin
Extermination Camp, by Constantin Simonow, Moscow,
1944, page 12. |
One would wish that the Exterminationists would at least get
their stories straight. Were the shoes found at Auschwitz or at
Lublin? (Actually, it is also worth noting here that Lublin is
the same thing as Majdanek or Majdanek, but is a hundred miles
from Auschwitz-Birkenau.)
In both photographs one can see that the individual shoes in the
foreground are identical, yet there are two different
backgrounds. Also, there are no shadows in the picture, making
it seem likely that it has been "touched up." One also wonders
why it is that the ultra-efficient Nazis allowed their victims'
shoes to be piled up without being tied in pairs. We are
indebted to an Exterminationist-Survivor Eugen Kogon who told us
in Der SS Staat (The SS State),
1st edition on page 132, or 5th edition on page 167, that there
was a big sign in front of the gas-chamber undressing room
telling the victims to fold their clothes neatly and tie their
shoes in pairs!
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| The terror in the occupied
areas had as first aim: the extermination of the Jewish
population and the intimidation of all residents who did
not subject themselves completely to the regime. The
Gestapo brought women and children to be shot. |
Caption in Illustrierte Geschichte des Zweiten
Weltkriegs (Illustrated History of WWII) by K.
Zentner, page 490.
This same picture also appears in Der Gelbe
Stern (The Yellow Star) by Gerhard
Schoenberner, page 96 in both German and English editions
(Corgi-Trans World 1969), with the caption Mass
Executions in Lijepaja, Latvia.
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| A group of women before being
shot. On the left of the picture is Purve Rosa, worker
from the Kursa factory, and her mother next to her.
Photograph from the chief of the Gestapo unit in
Ljiepaja, Hauptscharführer Karl Schrot, 15 December
1941. |
Caption from Verbrecherische Ziele --
Verbrecherische Mittel, published by the Marxist-Leninist
Institute, Moscow, 1963, page 132.
Although on the face of it, this may seem to be the same
picture, study for a moment the garments the women are wearing.
Woman #2 in the German picture has an undershirt that comes up
to her neck. Yet the same woman in the Soviet picture has a
scoop-neck garment. Woman #3 has a V-neckline in the German
picture, and a rounded neckline in the Soviet one! Woman #4 and
Woman #1 have also had their necklines altered. One must also
speculate on how it is that people can stand around so calmly in
their underclothes in Latvia in the middle of December when
temperatures are minus 40 degrees Centigrade!
But such is the standard of our popular media that they will
recycle such trash as this with impunity. The Soviet photo later
appeared in the popular Stern magazine,
and their caption told that the scene was now White Ruthenia!
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| Concentration Camp guard, with
victims, in Buchenwald. |
This was the caption in Der Spiegel 10
October 1966 page 101. The same picture was also used on
postcards with the slogan: This War Criminal Has
Not Been Found! which were distributed by
American Zionist organizations in the Spring of 1979. The cards
were to be mailed to the German prime minister demanding an
extension of the statute of limitations. The campaign was
successful.
However, the picture is an obvious fake. The guard's uniform is
all wrong. The side pockets beneath the belt are missing. The
buttoned edge of the jacket does not run correctly from top to
bottom. The pistol hangs on the wrong side. An
"Unterscharf¸hrer" would not be allowed to wear officer's pants
with boots.
Secondly, the lighting is all wrong. The "guard" and the two
hanging victims cast no shadows, while the prone victim does.
Lastly, it would seem terribly inefficient of those wicked Nazis
to choose such high trees to hang people from. Someone would
have had to have gone to a lot of trouble to get the ropes high
up into the crown of the tree. One also wonders whether it is
anatomically possible for people hanging by their wrists like
this to draw their legs up. Also, one cannot see the ropes; when
I visited Dachau museum in January 1968 they had on display a
life-size blow up of this same picture, and still no ropes were
detectable. Either the victims are floating in mid-air, or
someone forgot to draw them in!
More on the same topic
Some very real
war crimes...
