{"id":400244,"date":"2004-05-11T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-11T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/?p=400244"},"modified":"2022-06-21T18:17:29","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T17:17:29","slug":"johetne-mar-a-valosag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/nem-tema\/johetne-mar-a-valosag\/","title":{"rendered":"Reality Would Have to Begin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As far as the eye can see…<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Nov\u00fd Jicin (Neutitschein,\r\nCzechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic ). He completed his\r\nstudies at the Deutsche Film und Fernseakademie (BFFB) in Berlin and\r\nhas produced more than 80 films of various genres since 1965. He was\r\neditor of the independent Filmkitik<\/i> between 1973 and 1984, and\r\nthen following its termination and a break of five years, he became a\r\ncolumnist for the daily taz<\/i>.. Since the late 90\u2019s, his\r\nwritings have been published regularly in Jungle World<\/i>…..\r\nThe first representative bilingual selection of his essays was\r\npublished under the title Nachtdruck\/Imprints, Texte\/Writings<\/i>1<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>\r\nin 2001. The monograph Harun Farocki. Working on the Sight-Lines<\/i>\r\nwill be published in June 2004 by Amsterdam University Press under\r\nthe editorship of Thomas Elsaesser.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I came across Farocki\u2019s essay entitled \u201eReality Would Have\r\nto Begin\u201d (Die Wirklichkeit hätte beginnen)2<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>\r\nonce again in connection with a project that commenced last year and\r\nwas planned originally to be held at the Holocaust Documentation\r\nCenter on P\u00e1va Street. I was most interested in film, video\r\nand photographic work comprising a research of the domain concealed\r\nbetween the layers of reality, in which the authors strive for a more\r\nnuanced and\/or poetic demonstration of the points of engagement\r\nbetween events and contradictions, experience and identity, in such a\r\nway that they build into their works automatisms connected with the\r\nsubject and medium (film, photography, etc.) in question, as well as\r\nthe expectations of the viewer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201eReality Would Have to Begin\u201d is related to Farocki\u2019s 1988 filmic\r\nessay, Bilder des Welt und Inschrift des Krieges<\/i>-hez\r\n<\/i>(Images of the World and the Inscription of War), already\r\nconsidered a film classic.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\nrecontextualisation of both the single images from The Auschwitz\r\nAlbum<\/i> taken on the unloading ramp3<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>,\r\nand of the series of aerial recordings depicting Auschwitz,\r\noriginally taken in 1944 by the Allied Forces, and reanalysed 33\r\nyears later by the CIA, places the complex interplay of preservation\r\nand destruction into a system of intercorrelations of events and\r\ndevelopments of social and scientific history. Farocki disrupts the\r\nhistorical sequence, so that the structure of both the film and the\r\ntext are built upon the shifting rhythm of cuts, pauses,\r\nsuperimpositions and repetitions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The familiar archive recordings thus endowed with new dimensions become a\r\nreference point not only of the analysis of the relations existing\r\nbetween the technical conditions and possibilities of recording and\r\nreading\/interpretation, but also models the way in which the\r\ndiversity and change of interpretative horizons and reflective\r\nexperiences influence and saturate exactly the same image or image\r\nsequence with disparate meanings. <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Though it is not present in the essay, in the course of the English\r\nnarration of the film, a direct reference is made to the complex and\r\nsimultaneously metaphoric meaning of the word Aufklärung.<\/i>\r\nIn addition to the German \u201eenlightenment\u201d, the word also\r\nmeans military reconnaissance or aerial surveillance – the\r\nincreasingly articulated method and testing procedure of \u201esearch\r\nand destroy\u201d.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201eFarocki seeks to understand \u201d – writes Thomas Keenan, who refers\r\nto Images of the World and the Inscription of War<\/i> as the \u201efilm\r\nof light and catastrophe\u201d – \u201e what\r\nit means for the camera to be part of the equipment<\/i> of\r\ndestruction, indeed for the destruction to be in a certain sense\r\nimpossible without the camera.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

This is what he calls Aufklärung<\/i>: \u201eno bombing without\r\nreconnaissance, certainly, but also no annihilation without the\r\nrecord of what has been accomplished. \u201d4<\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n

P\u00e1ldi L\u00edvia<\/i><\/div>\r\n\r\n
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1<\/a>\r\n\tHarun Farocki: Nachdruck\/Imprint\r\n\tTexte\/Writings<\/i>, eds. Susanne GAENSHEIMER, Nicolaus SCHAFHAUSEN,\r\n\tNew York, Lukas & Sternberg, Berlin, Verlag Vorwerk 8, 2001.<\/p>\r\n\t

The\r\n\tvolume was published for the occasion of a joint retrospective\r\n\texhibition at the Westfälisher Kunstverein, M\u00fcnster; the\r\n\tFilmclub M\u00fcnster and the Frankfurter Kunstverein.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

2<\/a>\r\n\tDocuments, 1\/2<\/i>, Fall\/Winter 1992, pp. 136-46.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

3<\/a>\r\n\tThe Auschwitz Album: Lily Jacob\u2019s Album<\/i>, New York, The\r\n\tBeate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1980;<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\n\tAuschwitz Album, <\/i>eds. Israel GUTMAN and Bella GUTTERMAN,\r\n\tJerusalem, Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’\r\n\tRemembrance Authority Foundation, Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, 2002.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

4<\/a>\r\nThomas KEENAN: Light Weapons, http:\/\/www.bard.edu\/hrp\/keenan\/lightweapons.htm<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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 <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 1983, as preparations were underway to install even more nuclear\r\nweapons in the Federal Republic of Germany, G\u00fcnther Anders\r\nwrote:\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n Reality\r\nhas to begin. This means that the blockade of the entrances to the\r\nmurder installations, which continue to exist, must also be\r\ncontinuous.[…] This idea is not new. It reminds me of an action —\r\nor rather a non-action –more than forty years ago, when the Allies\r\nlearned the truth about the extermination camps in Poland. The\r\nproposal was immediately made to block access to the camps, which\r\nmeant bombing the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz, Majdanek,\r\netc. extensively in order to sabotage, through this blockade, the\r\ndelivery of new victims — that is, the possibility of further\r\nmurder.<\/i> 1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Nuclear\r\nweapons stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany arrive by ship\r\nin Bremerhaven where they are put on trains, whose departure time and\r\ndestination are kept secret. About a week before departure, Army\r\naircraft fly the entire length of the route and photograph it. This\r\nstatus report<\/i> is repeated half an hour before the train is to\r\npass, and the most recent set of images is compared with the first\r\nset. Through their juxtaposition one can discern whether any\r\nsignificant changes have occurred in the interim. If, for example, a\r\nconstruction vehicle has recently been parked along the tracks, the\r\npolice will drive to or fly over the spot to investigate whether it\r\nis providing camouflage for saboteurs. Whether such sabotage has been\r\nattempted is not made public.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The reconnaissance [Aufklärung<\/i>] of enemy territory by means\r\nof photographs taken from airplanes was already in use in World War\r\nI. And even before there were airplanes, balloons and rockets carried\r\ncameras aloft, and even carrier pigeons were outfitted with small\r\ncameras.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

In\r\nWorld War II, it was the English who were the first to begin\r\nequipping their bombers with photographic apparatuses. Since they had\r\nto fly through enemy flak (anti-aircraft artillery fire) and enemy\r\nfighters, the bomber pilots always tried to drop their bomb load as\r\nquickly as possible (often one third of the planes were lost on\r\nflights from England to Germany). In their fear the pilots believed\r\nall too readily that they had delivered their bombs on target. The\r\nintroduction of cameras on board aircraft significantly diminished\r\nthe space previously accorded to their oral reports. The English\r\nbomber pilots had the first work place in which the camera was\r\ninstalled to monitor performance.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Up\r\nto that point, men in war did work that was much less monitored and\r\ncapable of being monitored [kontrolliert und kontrollierbar<\/i>]\r\nthan all industrial, commercial, or agricultural activity, since the\r\nobject of their labor, enemy territory, was not under control. In the\r\ncase of the bomber pilot as well, the worker’s perception and\r\ndescription still counted for something. Photographs would destroy\r\nthis last remaining authority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

A\r\nphotographic image is a cut, a section through the bundle of light\r\nrays reflected off objects in a circumscribed space. Photography\r\nreproduces the three-dimensional object on a flat plane, based on the\r\nlaws of projective geometry. In 1858, it occurred to Meydenbauer, the\r\ndirector of the Government Building Office, to make use of this\r\noptical principle and to think of photographs as images for scale\r\nmeasurement. Faced with the task of measuring the facade of the\r\ncathedral in Wetzlar, he traversed the length of the facade in a\r\nbasket suspended from block and tackle (in the same way that\r\nwindow-washers do), in order to avoid the expense of erecting\r\nscaffolding. One evening, in order to save time, he tried to climb\r\nfrom the basket into a window of the tower, when the basket swung\r\naway from the facade and put him in danger of plummeting to the\r\nground.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

In the nick of time I grabbed the curved edge of an arch with my right\r\nhand, and with my left foot I shoved the basket far into the air; the\r\ncounter action sufficed to push my body into the opening and I was\r\nsaved.[…] As I came down, the thought occurred to me: is it not\r\npossible to replace measurement by hand by the reversal of that\r\nperspectival seeing which is captured in a photographic image? This\r\nthought, which eliminated the personal difficulty and danger involved\r\nin measuring building constructions, was father to the technique of\r\nscale measurement.<\/i>2<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Meydenbauer\r\noften repeated this story from the 19th century. It is a narrative of\r\nendangerment and redemptive insight: the hero is in the process of\r\nmaking a construction into a calculation, is engaged in the labor of\r\nabstraction, at which point the measured space wants once more to\r\nprove its actuality. The greatest danger is posed by the objectivity\r\nand actuality of things. It is dangerous to remain physically near\r\nthe object, to linger at the scene. One is much safer if one takes a\r\npicture and evaluates it later at one’s desk.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Immediately\r\nfollowing the initial publication of Meydenbauer’s idea, the\r\nmilitary, an organization with many desks, offered to cover the cost\r\nof a practical experiment, but this could not be undertaken right\r\naway, as there was a war on at the time. The first scale measurement\r\nbased on photographs took place in 1868 at the fortress of Saarlouis.\r\nThe military immediately recognized in the technique of photographic\r\nscale measurements the possibility of capturing objects and spaces at\r\na distance, numerically, spaces which soldiers otherwise could only\r\ntraverse and measure at the risk of life and limb. The military took\r\nMeydenbauer’s formulation of death or measurement literally.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n


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The\r\nfirst image taken by the Allies of the concentration camp at\r\nAuschwitz was shot on April 4, 1944. American planes had taken off\r\nfrom Foggia, Italy, heading towards targets in Silesia: factories for\r\nextracting gasoline from coal (gasoline hydrogenation) and for\r\nproducing Buna (synthetic rubber). While approaching the I.G. Farben\r\ncomplex, still under construction, an airman turned on the camera and\r\ntook a series of 22 aerial photographs, three of which also captured\r\nthe “main camp” located in the vicinity of the industrial\r\nplants. These images, along with others, arrived at the center for\r\naerial photography analysis in Medmenham, England. The analysts\r\nidentified the industrial complexes pictured, recorded in their\r\nreports the state of their construction and the degree of their\r\ndestruction, and made estimates of the production capacities of the\r\nBuna plants — they did not mention the existence of the camps. Again\r\nand again, even in 1945, after the Nazis had cleared out the\r\nAuschwitz camps, having dismantled some of the murder complexes and\r\neither killed, abandoned, or transferred the prisoners to other camps\r\nin the West, Allied airplanes flew over Auschwitz and captured the\r\ncamps in photographs. They were never mentioned in a report. The\r\nanalysts had no orders to look for the camps, and therefore did not\r\nfind them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

It was the success of the television series Holocaust<\/i> — a\r\nprogram that tried to make suffering and dying imaginable through\r\nvisual narratives, thereby turning it into kitsch — that gave two\r\nCIA employees the idea of looking for aerial photographs of\r\nAuschwitz. They fed into the CIA computer the geographic coordinates\r\nof all camps that were located in the vicinity of bombing targets,\r\nand thus also those of the I.G. Farben factory in Monowitz.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

I.G.\r\nFarben had built large plants in Monowitz and allowed the SS to\r\nprovide them with slave laborers. For a time, they operated a camp\r\n(Auschwitz III, also known as Buna<\/i>) located immediately\r\nadjacent to the factory grounds. Here, Jewish prisoners from across\r\nEurope, prisoners of war primarily from the Soviet Union, and others\r\nwho had been declared enemies of the Reich, were worked to death.\r\nSometimes, one seventh of a group died in one day; 30 out of 200\r\nperished in one day. Those who did not die from overwork or\r\nundernourishment, and those who were not beaten to death by the SS or\r\nkapos<\/i>, soon became too weak to work and were transferred to\r\nBirkenau, the extermination camp (Auschwitz II). The I.G. Farben\r\nMonowitz factories served the aircraft industry and consequently were\r\nof strategic interest to the Allies, which is what attracted the\r\nbombers and cameras and later helped to re-discover the\r\nimages.
Thirty-three years after the pictures were shot, two CIA\r\nmen undertook a new analysis of the images. In the first image from\r\nApril 4, 1944, they identified the house of Auschwitz’s Commandant\r\nand marked the wall between Blocks 10 and 11 where executions took\r\nplace. They also identified and marked the gas chambers of Auschwitz\r\nI and wrote:\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n a\r\nsmall vehicle was identified in a specially secured annex adjacent to\r\nthe Main Camp gas chamber. Eyewitness accounts describe how prisoners\r\narriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau, not knowing they were destined for\r\nextermination, were comforted by the presence of a “Red Cross\r\nambulance.” In reality, the SS used that vehicle to transport\r\nthe deadly<\/i> Zyklon-B crystals. Could this be that notorious\r\nvehicle?<\/i> 3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\nanalysts are not entirely certain since, while they are able, at a\r\ndistance of 7,000 meters, to make out the spot as a vehicle, they can\r\nestablish neither what type of vehicle it is nor discern any markings\r\non it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n


\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"\"<\/a>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

What\r\ndistinguishes Auschwitz from other places cannot be immediately\r\nobserved from these images. We can only recognize in these images\r\nwhat others have already testified to, eyewitnesses who were\r\nphysically present at the site. Once again there is an interplay\r\nbetween image and text in the writing of history: texts that should\r\nmake the images accessible, and images that should make the texts\r\nimaginable.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n On\r\nthe night of April 9th … we suddenly heard the distant rumble of\r\nheavy aircraft, something which we had never known in all the time we\r\nhad been in Auschwitz. …Was the secret out? Were high explosives\r\ngoing to rip away the high tension wires and the watch towers and the\r\nguards with their dogs? Was this the end of Auschwitz? <\/i>4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\ntwo prisoners listening for the sounds of aircraft on this April 9th\r\nwere attempting to escape from Auschwitz. One of them, Rudolf Vrba,\r\nthen 19 years old, had already been in the camp for two years, first\r\nworking on the construction of the Buna factory and later in the\r\n“effects” detachment. When a train with deportees arrived\r\nat the camp, the new arrivals had to drop all their possessions which\r\nwere collected and sorted by a special detail, a Sonderkommando<\/i>.\r\nThe Nazis called these possessions “effects,” and among\r\nthem Vrba found food, which helped him to sustain his strength and\r\nstay alive. The other prisoner, Alfred Wetzler, a Jew from Slovakia\r\nlike Vrba, worked in the camp administration office. There, he\r\ncommitted to memory the arrival dates, places of origin, and the\r\nnumber of deportees newly arrived at the camp. And since he was in\r\ncontact with men in the special details forced to work at the gas\r\nchambers and the crematoria, he also learned the statistics of those\r\nmurdered –and memorized long lists of numbers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Vrba\r\nand Wetzler decided to flee when it became clear to them that the\r\nresistance groups in the camp would not be able to revolt, but could\r\nat best fight for their own survival. They wanted to flee because\r\nthey could not imagine that the existence of the camp could be known\r\nto the resistance in Poland and the Allies. Vrba was convinced that\r\nAuschwitz was possible only “because the victims who came to\r\nAuschwitz didn’t know what was happening there.” 5<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

“Some\r\nmay find it hard to believe, but experience has proven that one can\r\nsee, not everything, but many things, better in the scale measurement\r\nthan on the spot,” 6<\/sup><\/a>\r\nwrote Meydenbauer in a text in which he sought to lay the groundwork\r\nfor historic preservation archives. Again, he described how\r\nunnecessary a long stay at the site is, even for the purpose of\r\nmeasurement. “At this mentally and physically strenuous\r\noccupation, the architect is exposed to the weather; sunshine or rain\r\nfall on his sketch book, and when he looks up, dust in his eyes.”\r\nIn these passages a horror for the objectivity of the world is\r\nnoticeable. Meydenbauer’s meditation gave rise in 1885 to the\r\nfoundation of the Royal Prussian Institute for Scale Measurement, the\r\nworld’s first. The military took up the idea of measuring from\r\nphotographs, as did the historic preservationists of monuments — the\r\nformer destroy, and the latter preserve. Since 1972, the Unesco\r\n“Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and\r\nNatural Heritage” obligates all member states to document\r\nspecial buildings photographically. Using these archived photographs,\r\none ought to be able to read and calculate the building’s plan, in\r\nthe case of its destruction — a destruction already conceived in\r\nthese protective measures.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\nmathematical artists of the Renaissance stretched transparent papers\r\nin frames and traced on the plane the outlines of the spatial objects\r\nshining through. With the invention of photography these founders of\r\nthe perspectival method seem to be the precursors of photographers;\r\nwith the invention of scale measurement, they seem to be early scale\r\nmeasurement engineers. Erwin Panofsky wrote that one could understand\r\nperspective observation both in terms of ratio and objectivism, and\r\nin terms of chance and subjectivism. “It is an ordering, but an\r\norder of the visual phenomenon.” 7<\/sup><\/a>\r\nIf one considers an image as a measuring device, then one should\r\nignore chance and subjectivity.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

To\r\nconceive of a photographic image as a measuring device is to insist\r\non the mathematicality, calculability, and finally the\r\n“computability” of the image-world. Photography is first of\r\nall analog technology<\/i>: a photographic image is an impression\r\nof the original: an impression at a distance, made with the help of\r\noptics and chemistry. Vil\u00e9m Flusser 8<\/sup><\/a>\r\nhas remarked that digital technology<\/i> is already found in\r\nembryonic form in photography, because the photographic image is\r\nbuilt up out of points and decomposes into points. The human eye\r\nsynthesizes the points into an image. A machine can capture the same\r\nimage, without any consciousness or experience of the form, by\r\nsituating the image points in a coordinate system. The continuous\r\nsign-system image thereby becomes divisible into “discrete”\r\nunits; it can be transmitted and reproduced. A code is thus obtained\r\nthat comprehends images. This leads one to activate the code and to\r\ncreate new images out of the code language. Images without originals\r\nbecome possible — generated<\/i> images.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Vrba\r\nand Wetzler hid themselves outside the high voltage fence around the\r\ncamp, under a pile of boards they had protected with tobacco soaked\r\nin petrol. An experienced fellow prisoner had advised them to do so,\r\nbecause this would keep the tracker dogs at bay. After three days,\r\nthe SS gave up their search and reported the escape of both men in a\r\ntelegram addressed to Himmler; this indicates the extent to which\r\nthey must have feared an eyewitness account from the concentration\r\ncamps. Vrba and Wetzler made it to the Slovakian border by marching\r\nat night, crossed it and made contact with the Jewish Council in the\r\ncity of Zilina. Over several days they reported on the death camp at\r\nAuschwitz. They drew the ground plan of the complexes, and recounted\r\nthe lists of statistics on the people delivered and murdered. What\r\nthey reported they had to reconfirm time and again, as they were\r\ncross-examined and the questions rephrased. The Jewish Council wanted\r\nconclusive, irrefutable material, in order to prove to the world the\r\nbarely-believable crime. The unimaginable was repeated to make it\r\nimaginable.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Three\r\ncopies of the Vrba-Wetzler report were drawn up and sent out. 9<\/sup><\/a>\r\nThe first was supposed to go to Palestine. It was sent to Istanbul,\r\nbut it never arrived there since the courier was probably a spy paid\r\nby the Nazis. The second copy was sent to a rabbi who had contacts in\r\nSwitzerland, and reached London via Switzerland. The British\r\ngovernment passed the report on to Washington. A third copy was sent\r\nto the papal nuncio and arrived in Rome approximately five months\r\nlater. When Vrba and Wetzler fled in April, the deportation and\r\nmurder of about one million Hungarian Jews was imminent. It was only\r\nin July of 1944 that the Horthy government stopped handing over\r\nHungarian Jews to the Germans. As the Red Army was approaching and\r\nthe war was on the verge of being lost, Horthy sought an arrangement\r\nwith the West, which now had accurate knowledge of Auschwitz and\r\ndemanded, through diplomatic channels, an end to the mass\r\nextermination. Vrba and Wetzler’s report had thus helped save\r\nhundreds of thousands of lives. On June 25th and 27th, the Manchester\r\nGuardian<\/i> reported on the Nazi death factory and mentioned for the\r\nfirst time the place name, Oswiecim. The mass extermination of the\r\nJews by the Nazis was now occasionally mentioned in the newspapers;\r\nhowever, only as one among many stories of dramatic war events, as\r\nnews that soon disappeared into oblivion.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

A\r\nyear later, when the Germans had lost the war and the concentration\r\ncamps were liberated, the Allies photographed and filmed the camps,\r\nthe survivors and the traces that pointed to the millions murdered.\r\nIt was above all the images of piles of shoes, glasses, false teeth,\r\nthe mountains of shorn hair, that have made a profound impression.\r\nPerhaps we need images, so that something that is hardly imaginable\r\ncan make an impression — photographic images, impressions of the\r\nactual at a distance.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\nNazis, in fact, also took photographs in Auschwitz. When Lili Jacob\r\n— who had been transferred from Auschwitz to a Silesian munitions\r\nfactories and from there to the Dora-Nordhausen camp — was looking\r\nfor warm clothes in the guards’ quarters after the liberation, she\r\nfound an album with 206 photographs. In the pictures she recognized\r\nherself and members of her family who had not survived Auschwitz.\r\n 10<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"\"<\/a>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

Photography\r\nwas forbidden in Auschwitz, but apparently two SS men were charged\r\nwith documenting the camp. They captured the “sorting” or\r\n“selection” procedure in one comprehensive high-angle shot.\r\nIn the foreground we see men in SS uniforms, behind them the\r\nnewly-arrived deportees in two columns. Seen from the camera’s\r\nperspective, men and women up to roughly the age of forty are\r\nstanding on the left, wearing lighter colored clothes; on the right\r\nare the older ones, women with children, and all those too sick or\r\nweak to work. Those standing on the right will be taken immediately\r\nto the gas chamber. Those standing on the left will undergo the\r\nadmission procedure; they will be tattooed, they will be shaved bald,\r\nand they will be assigned work. Work that is also a form of\r\nextermination, that delays death and prolongs dying.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Once the authorities started to take photographs, everything had to be\r\ncaptured in images; even the crimes they themselves commit are\r\ndocumented visually. A mountain of images rises alongside a mountain\r\nof files.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

An\r\nimage from this album: a woman has arrived at Auschwitz and the\r\ncamera captures her in the act of looking back as she walks by. On\r\nher left, an SS man holds an old man, also recently arrived at\r\nAuschwitz, by the lapels of his jacket with his right hand: a gesture\r\nof sorting. In the center of the image the woman: the photographers\r\nalways point their cameras at the beautiful woman. Or, when they have\r\nset up their camera somewhere, they take a picture when a woman who\r\nin their eyes is beautiful passes by. Here, on the “platform”\r\nat Auschwitz, they photograph a woman the way they would cast a\r\nglance at her in the street.
The woman knows how to take in this\r\nphotographic gaze with the expression on her face, and how to look\r\never so slightly past the viewer. In just this way, on a boulevard\r\nshe would look past a gentleman casting a glance at her, into a store\r\nwindow. She shows that she does not respond to the gaze but is still\r\naware of being looked at. With this gaze she transplants herself into\r\na different place, a place with boulevards, gentlemen, shop windows,\r\nfar from here. The camp, run by the SS, is meant to destroy her, and\r\nthe photographer who captures her beauty for posterity, is part of\r\nthat same SS. How the two elements interplay – destruction and\r\npreservation!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

This\r\nis how we come to have an image like this, an image that fits well\r\nwith the story the Nazis spread about the deportation of the Jews.\r\nThey said the Jews would arrive in a kind of large ghetto, a kind of\r\ncolony, a place “somewhere in Poland.” The Nazis did not\r\nmake public even these images, since they deemed it more appropriate\r\nto withhold everything that pointed to the actuality of the\r\nextermination camps. It was more useful to allow the place “somewhere\r\nin Poland” to remain uncertain.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\nstructure of the album Lili Jacob found follows the ordering\r\nprinciple of the camp. It classifies the people in the camp according\r\nto the designations “still able-bodied men,” “no\r\nlonger able-bodied men,” “still able-bodied women,”\r\n“no longer able-bodied women.” In the future they looked\r\nforward to, the Nazis could have displayed these images; here, there\r\nwould be not a single kick, not a single dead person, to be seen —\r\nthe extermination of the Jews would appear as an administrative\r\nmeasure.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Vrba\r\nand Wetzler’s report was not the first news of the extermination of\r\nthe Jews in camps and death factories, but due to the precision of\r\nits details about places and numbers it had a much greater impact\r\nthan those that had preceded it. In its wake, Jewish functionaries\r\nrepeatedly appealed to London and Washington for air raids to destroy\r\nthe train tracks leading to Auschwitz. Yitzak Gruenbaum of the Jewish\r\nAgency in Jerusalem telegraphed to Washington: “Suggest\r\ndeportation would be much impeded if railways between Hungary and\r\nPoland could be bombed.” 11<\/sup><\/a>\r\nBenjamin Akzin, of the US government’s War Refugee Board, advocated\r\nbombing the gas chambers and crematoria themselves, as this would\r\nconstitute “the most tangible — and perhaps the only tangible\r\n— evidence of the indignation aroused by the existence of these\r\ncharnel-houses. […] Presumably, a large number of Jews in these\r\ncamps may be killed in the course of such bombings (though some of\r\nthem may escape in the confusion). But such Jews are doomed to death\r\nanyhow. The destruction of the camps would not change their fate, but\r\nit would serve as visible retribution on their murderers and it might\r\nsave the lives of future victims.” 12<\/sup><\/a>\r\nIn fact, had the gas chambers and crematoria been destroyed in 1944,\r\nthe Nazis could no longer have rebuilt them. The military and\r\npolitical leaders of England and the USA refused, however, to attack\r\nthe means of access to the camps or the murder installations\r\nthemselves. They let the pleas, suggestions, petitions, and demands\r\nfor this circulate for a long time in their machinery, and then\r\njustified their refusal with the argument that they should not divert\r\ntheir forces. The only way to help the Jews would be a military\r\nvictory over Germany.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

When\r\non August 25, 1944, American planes once more flew over Auschwitz,\r\none again took a picture from which we can tell that a train has\r\narrived in Auschwitz II (Birkenau). One of its freight cars can be\r\nmade out near the left edge of the image. A group of deportees is\r\nwalking along the tracks toward the gas chambers: crematorium complex\r\n2, the entrance gate is open. Behind the gate a decorative flower bed\r\n(“landscaping”): courtyard and buildings are meant to\r\nconvey the impression that this a hospital or a sanitarium. Above the\r\nflower bed a flat building, barely recognizable only through the\r\nshadow of its front wall (“undressing room”). In this room,\r\nthose arriving were told to undress in preparation for showering.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Diagonally\r\nacross is the gas chamber. Its furnishings were meant to simulate a\r\nshower room. It could hold up to 2000 people, who were often forced\r\nin violently. Then the SS would lock the doors shut. Four openings\r\ncan be discerned on the roof (“vent”). It was through these\r\nopenings that, after a short waiting period to allow the temperature\r\nin the gas chamber to rise, SS men in gas masks dropped the Zyklon-B\r\npoison. Everyone in the gas chambers died within three minutes.\r\nOthers, who did not have to go to their deaths immediately, can be\r\nseen here waiting in line for registration. They are waiting to be\r\ntattooed, to have their heads shaven, and to be assigned work and a\r\nplace to sleep. The doubly curved figure of their waiting line\r\nextends all the way to the trees on the lower right.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\nNazis did not notice that someone had noted their crimes, and the\r\nAmericans did not notice that they had captured them on film. The\r\nvictims also failed to notice. Notes, as written in a book of God.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Meydenbauer’s\r\nfear of death established departments and administrative authorities\r\nthat process images. Today, one speaks of “image processing”\r\nwhen machines are programmed to screen and classify photographs\r\naccording to given criteria. A satellite continually takes pictures\r\nof a specific region, a program examines all the images to determine\r\nwhether their details betray differences with earlier images. Another\r\nmachine examines all the images given it in order to detect the\r\ntraces of moving vehicles. Yet another is programmed to read and\r\nreport all forms that indicate a rocket silo. This is called “image\r\nprocessing;” machines are supposed to evaluate images made by\r\nmachines.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The\r\nNazis talked about the “eradication” of cities, which means\r\nthe suspension of their symbolic existence on the map. Vrba and\r\nWetzler wanted to put the names Oswiecim\/Auschwitz on the map<\/i>.\r\nAt that time, images of the Auschwitz death factory already existed,\r\nbut no one had evaluated<\/i> them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n In\r\nthe fall of 1944, Jewish women who worked at a munitions factory\r\ninside Auschwitz managed to smuggle small amounts of explosives to\r\nmembers of the camp underground. The material was relayed to male\r\nprisoners who worked in the gassing-cremation area. Those few\r\nwretched Jews then attempted what the Allied powers, with their vast\r\nmight, would not. On October 7, in a suicidal uprising, they blew up\r\none of the crematorium buildings. <\/i>13<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

None\r\nof the insurgents survived. On an aerial photograph the partial\r\ndestruction of crematorium IV can be discerned.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n


\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

First\r\npublished as “Die Wirklichkeit hätte zu beginnen,” in\r\nBernd Busch, Udo Liebelt, and Werner Oeder, eds., Fotovision:\r\nProjekt Fotografie nach 150 Jahren<\/i>, Hannover: Sprengel Museum,\r\n1988, 119-125. Translated by Marek Wieczorek, with Thomas Keenan and\r\nThomas Y. Levin.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n


\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Sources of the images:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n


\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

1. Auschwitz-I, detail from the aerial recording of 4 April 1994. Source: D.A. Brugioni and R.G.\r\nPoirer: The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination\r\nComplex.<\/i> Washington D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1979.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

2. I.G. Farben complex, aerial recording. Source: Ibid.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

3. Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, 26 June 1944. Source: Ibid.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

4. Unknown photographer: Auschwitz concentration camp, \u201cselection\u201d. Image from the \u201cAuschwitz album\u201d\r\n(Serge Klarsfeld).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

5. Unknown photographer: Auschwitz concentration camp, \u201cselection\u201d. Image from Lili J\u00e1kob\u2019s\r\n\u201cAuschwitz album\u201d, ca. 1944 (Serge Klarsfeld).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

6. Gas chamber II and the crematorium, detail from the 25 August 1944 aerial recording. Source: The\r\nHolocaust Revisited<\/i>, op.cit.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n


<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

1<\/a>\r\nG\u00fcnther Anders, “Schinkensemmelfrieden — Rede zum Dritten\r\nForum der Krefelder Friedensinitiative,” Konkret<\/i>\r\n(Hamburg), November 1983.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

2<\/a>\r\nCited in Albrecht Grimm, 120 Jahre Photogrammetrie in Deutschland:\r\nDas Tagebuch von Albrecht Meydenbauer<\/i>, Munich: R. Oldenbourg\r\nVerlag, 1977, 15-16.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

3<\/a>\r\nDino A. Brugioni and Robert G. Poirier, The Holocaust Revisited: A\r\nRetrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination\r\nComplex<\/i>, Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, February\r\n1979, 5.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

4<\/a>\r\nRudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic, I Cannot Forgive<\/i>, London:\r\nSidgwick and Jackson Ltd., and Anthony Gibbs and Phillips, 1963;\r\nreprinted, with additional material, as 44070: The Conspiracy of\r\nthe Twentieth Century<\/i>, Bellingham, Wash.: Star and Cross\r\nPublishing House, 1989, 233.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

5<\/a>\r\nRudolf Vrba in a statement from the film Shoah, <\/i>in Claude\r\nLanzmann, Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust<\/i> (The\r\nComplete Text of the Film), New York: Pantheon Books, 1985, 166.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

6<\/a>\r\nAlbrecht Meydenbauer, Das Denkmäler-Archiv<\/i>, Berlin 1884.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

7<\/a>\r\nErwin Panofsky, “Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische Form,'”\r\nin Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft<\/i>, Berlin:\r\nHessling, 1974; trans. Christopher S. Wood as Perspective as\r\nSymbolic Form<\/i>, New York: Zone Books, 1991, 71.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

8<\/a>\r\nVil\u00e9m Flusser, F\u00fcr eine Philosophie der Fotographie<\/i>,\r\nGöttingen, 1984; Towards a Philosophy of Photography<\/i>,\r\nGöttingen: European Photography, 1984.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

9<\/a>\r\n[Trans. note: the full text of the report is reprinted in Vrba and\r\nBestic, 44070<\/i>, 279-317.]<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

10<\/a>\r\n[Trans. note: Serge Klarsfeld, ed., The Auschwitz Album: Lili\r\nJacob’s Album<\/i>, New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1980;\r\nreprinted in a trade edition, with text by Peter Heller, as The\r\nAuschwitz Album: A Book Based Upon an Album Discovered by a\r\nConcentration Camp Survivor, Lili [Jacob] Meier<\/i>, New York: Random\r\nHouse, 1981.]<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

11<\/a>\r\nCited in Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies<\/i>, New York:\r\nHolt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981, 220.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

12<\/a>\r\nCited in Gilbert, 247-248.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

13<\/a>\r\nDavid S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the\r\nHolocaust, 1941-1945<\/i>, New York: Pantheon, 1984, 307.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As far as the eye can see… Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Nov\u00fd Jicin (Neutitschein, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic ). He completed his studies at the Deutsche Film und Fernseakademie (BFFB) in Berlin and has produced more than 80 films of various genres since 1965. He was editor of the independent Filmkitik […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":630242,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nem-tema"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2024107,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400244\/revisions\/2024107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}