Nazi's photo album shows life of a top Auschwitz officer | 60 Minutes

by the time a new play opened last week off Broadway by acclaimed writer and director Moises Kaufman it had already been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize it's based on the true story of a photo album from awit that was sent to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC in 2007 Museum historians weren't sure what to make of it at first but the album turned out to be the Scrapbook of a Nazi an SS officer who helped run the day-to-day operations of owitz where about 1.1 million people mostly Jews were murdered between 1940 and 1945 the album doesn't show any prisoners or gas Chambers what it does show are some of the most notorious killers in history seemingly enjoying themselves that's what museum officials found so chilling and what Moises Kaufman spent 14 years creating a play about the story will continue in a moment when I first saw the photographs I got goosebumps and I I remember thinking you know many of the people in my family died in aitz and these are the people who were doing it and they don't seem to have any remorse seeing that in a photograph so clearly articulated is terrifying this is terrifying because they all look so much like us the photographs may appear unremarkable at first SS officers at dinner parties drinking socializing flirting with their young Nazi secretaries but when these pictures were taken the Germans were losing the war and Exterminating more Jews and awit than at any other time in the Holocaust several images show an SS officer giving his secretaries blueberries while a man plays an accordion the inscription reads here there are blueberries Moises Kaufman picked that for the title of his play I wanted the audience to have the experience that we had looking at the photographs what was it about the the series of the women eating blueberries that that so struck you that there were just you know teenage girls who were secretaries everyone is showing the photographer their empty plates but there's one of the women who pretend crying so she's so sad because she's run out of blueberries and outside of the frame there's 1.1 million people who are being killed so how do you lead your daily life and at the same time participate in one of the largest uh killing machines in the history of mankind the caption says rain from a clear [Music] sky Kaufman's play is centered on the museum historians who worked with survivors and even descendants of Nazis themselves to uncover what the album was the images appear to be straight out of a holiday scrapbook no one had ever seen images like these before there are few photos of awit because the Nazis worked hard to conceal their crimes I count 116 photographs Kaufman's main character is Rebecca reing the historian of the Holocaust Museum played by actor Elizabeth stalman this is when the album becomes an obsession for me the real Rebecca rebelling received the album from a former US Counter Intelligence officer he said he founded in 1946 in an abandoned Apartment in wartorn Frankfurt while hunting down Nazi war criminals he donated it to the museum but wanted to remain anonymous how did you go about finding out who made this I didn't see any trains I didn't see anything I recognized it was maybe the third time flipping through it and that's when I saw Joseph mangala no pictures of Dr Joseph mangala in awit had ever been found before to see the album we went to a high security climate control facility in Maryland where the original pages are stored that's Dr mangala that's mangala and these are still the only known photos of mangala while he was stationed at the camp mangala was known by prisoners at asts as the angel of death he conducted gruesome medical experiments mostly on children and often stood on the platform when trains arrived selecting who would be sent to work and who would die immediately in gas Chambers not only is it mangala these are some of the most infamous officers at the camp so you see there's Bayer Richard Bayer is on the album's first page he was the last commandant of awit that helped historians identify his Deputy Carl Hawker and it turned out this was hawker's personal album his Cherished Memories behind the scenes of a massacre May 1944 is when Hawker got to ashwoods yes so this is the entirety of his time at ashwoods before the war Hawker had been a struggling bank teller becoming an SS officer at aitz was considered a big step up he had been staffed at the midic camp before this and so he had experience with prisoners arriving with selections with gas Chambers he signed receipts for zeyon B the lethal gas that was used for killing people he is a crucial COG in the Nazi killing machine the 116 photos in the album show aitz as Carl Hawker wanted to remember it wow it's a mix of like candid things and really officials this is his dog his dog's name is favorit I mean what's so stunning about them is how normal yeah yeah I mean who hasn't taken a photo of them shaking their dog's hand mhm so this is Ule fire 1944 which is Nazi Christmas they know that the Soviets are coming they are not far they can probably hear the bombs christmase yeah the album reveals something else Museum officials hadn't seen before the Nazis built a vacation resort at awit it was called sulah huta these pictures show a gathering of top SS officers there in July 1944 Rebecca rebeling believes it was a party they were congratulating themselves for successfully murdering more than 350,000 Hungarian Jews in just 55 days this looks like they're singing they are and this front row is really what the director of the museum Sarah Bloomfield calls the chorus of criminals so you have hucker you have OT M the head of the gas chamber section there's Rudolph Hurst the former commant of the former commant of aitz mangala is here they're celebrating the the Su sucessful mass murder yeah then you know it was somebody labeled it a metropolis of death and that's what it was it worked like an assembly line factory Irene Weiss got to awit the day after Carl Hawker started working there she arrived when she was 13 on a train packed with Jews from Hungary separated from her parents and four of her siblings she says she found herself on the platform holding her younger sister Edith's hand as they approached Dr manga and everything was in a matter of seconds you know that stick came down between us he he held life and death with that stick all of a sudden I was alone she didn't know it at the time but that moment was captured by a Nazi photographer documenting the arrival and processing of Hungarian Jews it appears in one of the only other albums of aitz this photo has been colorized this is the group already going to the gas chamber where are you in this picture well I am right here this is you that's me right here so this is the moment after you've been separated from your little sister Edith the very moment yes that's what I'm looking at I can't leave I left her Irene Weiss never saw Edith her parents or her brothers alive again what she has is this photo that's her mother Leia sitting on the ground just behind her brothers Gerson and Reuben at aitz after this picture was taken they were led into a gas chamber they had to kill the children so they will not be a new generation and they discovered that if they also killed the mothers then they didn't have to worry about the chaos that that would create separating the children wouldn't be upset by being separated and the mothers wouldn't be wouldn't be upset wife spent the next eight months working outside one of those gas Chambers she sorted shoes and other belongings of the Dead we saw these Columns of women mothers and children and going into the door there talking to us and they're told they're walking into a bath house you know they asking questions where are you from and a half hour later the chimney belching fire and that went on day after day and night after night so you saw thousands of women children walking into gas Chambers absolutely and you talk to some of them absolutely in the last seconds of their life minutes of their life yes but we couldn't cry it was an amazing thing this is beyond crying tears are for normal pain that kind of brutality from fellow mankind is so deep that you know people say Broken Heart the the heart keeps working but the soul never forgets Irene Weiss wasn't surprised by the photos in Carl hawker's album but when they were released publicly they made headlines around the world Tillman T read about them online in Germany while on his lunch break and there was an article new photos from aitz have appeared yeah I thought this is interesting when he looked at the photos he was surprised to see his grandfather Dr hin bom Cotter on the first picture it wasn't 100% % clear but then I flipped two more pictures and I was absolutely 100% clear that that was him T knew his grandfather was head physician at soen Housen concentration camp and had done medical experiments on prisoners and sent thousands to be killed at other camps but tab wasn't sure why his grandfather had gone to aitz in Germany it's he connected with Rebecca oring and soon discovered just How Deeply involved his grandfather was in the Holocaust when you see the picture of your grandfather does that feel like your grandfather for me strictly speaking it's two different persons uh the grandfather that I knew was a rather normal grandfather and the SS officer is is a different person for me it's impossible to reconcile the two it's difficult difficult Really T now helps the museum search for more photos and documents by reaching out to other descendants of Nazis of course you want to be part of some kind of movement that helps preventing things like that from happening again you know your grandfather and you know what he did does it make you think differently about human beings what we are all capable of absolutely absolutely how could Highly Educated Physicians people whose entire professional purpose was to heal become systematic Killers the play about the Hawker album by Moises Kaufman and Amanda grck his co-writer and longtime collaborator raises difficult questions not just about our past but about ourselves when we look at these pictures we're looking through the lens of how they saw what they were doing why is it important to see AST through their eyes because they didn't wake up each morning thinking I'm an evil monster I'm going to do evil monstrous things they woke up each day and they went about their lives filled with justifications and beliefs in what they were doing it makes all of us ask the question well what am I capable of doing I think that's what's happening when the comes in they sit here and they go who would I have been in that picture the most dangerous animal in the world is man because other animals will hurt you if they're hungry or it's their nature of hunting but man can turn into an animal in no time all he needs is permission as soon as permission is given from higher ups from government it accelerates even a hint of permission that it's okay to attack this group or exclude this group or shame that group it's it's happening it's never stopped

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 1,017,931

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, nazis, auschwitz, holocaust, world war II, cbs news, 60 minutes

Id: R2u-Y7C7FUU

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024