Product Details
Hardcover
224 pages
Jewish Publication Society
Published 2005
Amazon.com
The Last Album by Ann Weiss contains images selected from a collection of about 2,400 personal photographs that belonged to Jews who taken to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The pictures were found after the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. No other such collection is known to exist, because personal photographs were among the property that was systematically destroyed when Jews arrived at the camps. It is difficult to describe the experience of seeing these photographs, whose power lies in their subjects' innocence: "Regard these doomed and ferociously normal people," writes Leon Wieseltier (author of Kaddish), in his foreword to the book. The people in the pictures are relaxing at the beach, playing the piano, getting married, looking in the mirror, climbing mountains, climbing trees. Wieseltier explains what kinds of knowledge, love, and memory are at play in the experience of paging through The Last Album: "We do not know the names of the people in these photographs, but we know something just as precious, just as binding: we know the objects of their devotion, who and what they loyally loved. We have been initiated by their deaths into their intimacies. We remember what they wished to remember; and in the memory of their memory, they live." --Michael Joseph Gross Ce texte se rapporte à une édition épuisée ou indisponible de ce titre.
From Library Journal
When she visited Auschwitz in 1986, Weiss, a child of Holocaust survivors and a historian, teacher, and documentary filmmaker, was especially moved when she viewed the approximately 2400 personal photographsDthe last keepsakes of the murdered victimsDthat are part of the Auschwitz archive. The story of how these photos survived is a tale in itself and one that Weiss addresses in the introductory pages of her book. Weiss wanted to learn more about the stories behind these photographs, so she spent the next decade researching and interviewing survivors to identify the photo subjects. From the collection of Auschwitz photos, she has chosen a representative sampling that recaptures everyday life before the Holocaust. The first part of the book offers photographs of institutions and people involved in Jewish movements. The latter section focuses on various families, with a great emphasis on what it was like to be a young person growing up in a darkening political climate. The photos are greatly enhanced by the memories of survivors, and together they make the Holocaust more immediate and personal and less statistical and abstract. Recommended for all libraries with strong Holocaust collections.DPaul Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Ce texte se rapporte à une édition épuisée ou indisponible de ce titre.
Book Description
In this revised edition of The Last Album there are over 400 of these remarkable photographs. The collection traces the story of how they arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau and how the author came to see them through what was essentially a fortuitous accident. In the years that followed, Weiss identified as many people and places in the photos as possible, traveling around the world to track down remaining family members and friends, and listening to stories of the inmates' lives before they were removed to the camp. Many of these accounts are transcribed here.
Although the photographs in this book were found at a death camp, they are bursting with life. We see babies; parents with their children; groups of teenagers; people at work, at school, at home, on vacation -- normal people leading normal lives.
The photographs and reminiscences gathered here offer a rare and intensely personal view of who these individuals were and, most importantly, how they chose to remember themselves.
Publisher comments
An extraordinary collection of photos and the stories behind them, updated and expanded.
In October of 1986, Ann Weiss entered a locked room at Auschwitz and came across an archive of over 2,400 photographs brought to the death camp by Jewish deportees from across Europe during the Holocaust. The photos, both candid snapshots and studied portraits, had been confiscated, but instead of being destroyed they were hidden at great risk and saved. In many cases these pictures are the only remnants left of entire families.
About the author
Ann Weiss is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors from Poland. She has worked as a researcher, writer, documentary filmmaker, and educator. She is founder and director of the Eyes from the Ashes Educational Foundation, an interviewer and analyst for the Transcending Trauma Survival Project at the University of Pennsylvania, and has served on the Second Generation Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., since its inception. She lives near Philadelphia with her family. |
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