Chosen to be Gassed

26th May 1944: The SS photograph the process of 'selection' on the 'ramp' at Auschwitz-Birkenau - just another day to murder thousands of Jews

A few individuals in the album were subsequently identified. Brothers Sril and Zelig Jacob were gassed within hours of this photograph being taken.

The SS staff responsible for perpetrating the Holocaust were proud of their work. In the early part of the war, the establishment of ghettoes in Eastern Europe and the brutal treatment of Jews had been openly photographed. At some point this openness had ceased - but detailed reports to senior Nazis on what was going on and exactly how many Jews were being killed continued. Sometimes these internal Nazi reports were supplemented with photographs.

As Auschwitz began ‘processing’ Jews from Hungary at an unprecedented rate in May 1944, someone decided to document the steps taken in a series of photographs. A 56-page photographic album was prepared to show how cattle trucks crammed with men, women and children arriving at Auschwitz were dealt with. The 193 surviving images in ‘The Auschwitz Album’¹ are the most graphic evidence we have of how it was possible to murder so many people so quickly.

At this time, the gas chambers were producing bodies so quickly that the crematoria could not cope - open-air cremation pits had to be used as well. These were the only two parts of the process not included in the album.

The first dateable images were taken on the 26th and 27th May 1944, from a series taken in late May and early June:

Almost daily several trains consisting, on average, of forty to fifty cattle trucks, arrived on the newly built ramp.

Up to a hundred people had been locked inside each truck for the journey from Hungary.

Men and boys, and Women and children, are separated into long queues to wait.

Meanwhile, vast quantities of property - brought by people who have been told they are being taken to a ‘ new life in the East’ - must be sorted.

A selection process begins, with the able-bodied being sent off to join different queues.

The able-bodied men have their heads shaved and their possessions taken.

The men are then issued uniforms.

The able-bodied women selected to work.

Those chosen for the gas chambers are sent off in a different direction.

Over a million people will be directed straight to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

A large group of the condemned are sent to wait in a wooded area.

1. The whole of the album is available to view at Yad Vashem, with more background details.

See also the inside description of Auschwitz by SS Judge Konrad Morgen.