At first glance, the photographs seem innocuous enough. Men and women in uniform lie back in deckchairs, listen to accordion music, decorate a Christmas tree.
It seems like a carefree life - but the pictures were taken at the Auschwitz death camp at the height of the Holocaust. 
The happy men and women are Nazi officials enjoying time off from the business of genocide, their images collected by Karl Hoecker, an adjutant to the camp commander.
His unique album of 116 photographs was found in Frankfurt in 1946 by a US intelligence officer, who kept it to himself for six decades before showing it to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum last year.
Museum archivist Rebecca Erbelding, who has helped to put album online, believes the very ordinariness of the scenes captured is what makes them so chilling.
"It shouldn't have surprised us that this was how they lived in Auschwitz, that this was how they unwound after a 'hard day's work'," she told the BBC News website. 
It's shocking because it's a reminder that they were human beings, that they weren't red-eyed monsters 
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
"But I think it's shocking because it's a reminder that they were human beings, that they weren't red-eyed monsters, that they had pets and children and lives, and yet could do this to other people."
6 comments:
p.s. click on the link "in pictures: auschwitz album" right under the second photo for some more pics (if you want 'em).
Bloody chr-st, scary.
It's amazing what people can rationalise.
Creepy.
Maybe a post of Hitler with a teddy bear would be appropriate too.
(by leonard cohen)
ALL THERE IS TO KNOW
ABOUT ADOLPH EICHMANN
EYES: Medium
HAIR: Medium
WEIGHT: Medium
HEIGHT: Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: None
NUMBER OF FINGERS: Ten
NUMBER OF TOES: Ten
INTELLIGENCE: Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
I studied violence in a problem-based seminar last year. We approached it from a variety of perspectives, biological, psychological, environmental, genetic, sociological, political etc, etc...and yet really, all that reading, writing, and discussing only made it clear to me that the potential for unthinkable acts of violence exist in each one of us.
This may seem dark or disturbing, but you know, the reverse is also true. Non-violence, good works, LOVE - just as unavoidable, and at times, just as unexplainable.
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