A rare photographic record of the Holocaust, discovered by a survivor in a cupboard.

Art · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: The Auschwitz Album is one of the few visual documents detailing the operations of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp. Originally intended as internal Nazi propaganda to showcase the efficiency of the Final Solution, the album was miraculously recovered by a survivor who found it in a vacated SS barracks.

The album consists of 193 photographs across 56 pages, documenting the arrival and processing of Hungarian Jews in the spring and summer of 1944. These images capture the disembarkation from train boxcars, the selection process by SS doctors and wardens, and the sorting of looted belongings in the Canada storage facilities. While the photographers are not definitively identified, they were likely members of the camp's Erkennungsdienst, or identification service, such as Bernhard Walter or Ernst Hoffmann. Even the camp director, Rudolf Höss, may have taken some of the shots himself.

Scholars interpret the album as a piece of internal propaganda designed to demonstrate the orderly nature of the camp's operations to high-level Nazi officials. This documentation occurred during a period of accelerated deportation, where approximately 650,000 people were slated for transport to Auschwitz over three months. The images focus on the management of the arrival process, highlighting the efficiency of the system that separated those deemed fit for work from those sent immediately to the gas chambers.

The survival of the album is a historical anomaly, given the Nazis' efforts to maintain absolute secrecy regarding the Final Solution. Its discovery is equally remarkable: Lili Jacob, a survivor who had been transported from Auschwitz to the Dora concentration camp, found the album in a cupboard beside her bed while recovering from illness. The album contained photographs of her own relatives and community members, despite the discovery site being over 640 kilometers from the camp. After being used as evidence in the 1960s Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, the album was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 following the efforts of Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld.

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