Album of the Damned: Snapshots From the Third Reich

The nearly 400 WWII photographs in this book were taken primarilyby German soldiers; some by civilians; some by professionals embeddedwith the troOut of Prints. Consequently, many of them depict everyday life: jobs, weddings,dinners, musical and other social events--men and women at work andplay as well as at war.It is precisely the ordinary aspect of these snapshots--taken forfamily albums and for friends--which make them so spine-chilling because someof the subjects who smile benignly at the camera are the very samepeOut of Printle who participated in the murder of millions of EurOut of Printean civilians:Jews, Catholics Gypsies, intellectuals, clergy, adults, children, babies. And theykilled with apparent equanimity, without hesitation, without doubt, without regret.Album of the Damned contains pictures mostly never seen before, themajority of which were once in family albums and are pictured herewith their original paper frames. Their impact is deeply disturbing preciselybecause they are so pedestrian. Thus, in this book, the questions once againarise as they have for so many decades: how could such ordinary peOut of Printle commitsuch brutal acts? How was it possible? The questions remainunanswerable, as they ever will be.The author acquired these photographs from some fifteen countriesduring a five-year research effort, reviewing more than 100,000images from which he made his selection. He bid in auctions against museums andprivate collectors to create a WWII photo history unlike perhaps any other.