Ep. 5: The Sobibor camp photo album with Martin Cüppers

            The Nazis murdered at least 167,000 Jews in the small extermination center of Sobibor located today in far-eastern Poland on the border with Ukraine.  In 2020, an album belonging to the Deputy Commandant, Johann Niemann, surfaced and was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by his family.

            This album contains never before seen images of Sobibor and the lives of its SS, but also its prisoners.  Martin Cüppers joins the podcast to talk about the history of the camp and what these photos tell us about its history.

            All of the photographs mentioned in the podcast can be found online here courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Martin Cüppers is Professor of history and director of the Ludwigsburg Research Center at the University of Stuttgart.

He is the co-author along with Ann Leppers and Jürgen Matthäus of From "Euthanasia" to Sobibor- An SS Officer's Photo Collection.

Follow on Twitter @holocaustpod.
Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman (00:00.354)
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Holocaust History Podcast. I'm your host, Waidman Bourne. And today we have a really exciting guest, Martin Coopers, to come talk to us about the Sobibor Extermination Center and also this very, very important photo album that was just discovered or just became known to the public in 2020. So welcome, Martin, how you doing?

Martin (00:28.001)
I'm fine, wait man, and yeah, I really appreciate to join your podcast. Thanks for inviting me.

Waitman (00:35.134)
yet and you are uh... i'll let you do so more for formally but you were one of my favorite places as an historian which is the uh... the ludwigsberg and center for the investigation dot the violent crime right

Martin (00:49.073)
Indeed it is, and such an inspiring location. So, to tell the story, I am part of the University of Stuttgart. I am the scientific head of Research Institute Stuttgart, which is in Ludwigsburg part of three institutions in general.

So some division of Federal Archives Ludwigsburg, managing the sources, the judicial resources of the former center office of the German prosecutors, still working here in the same house. And you could imagine these three institutions together

This is indeed inspiring with that remarkable history of central office Ludwigsburg founded in 1958.

Waitman (01:56.138)
And I'll say for the audience, I've worked there extensively. And it is amazing to be, I mean, the building itself is amazing because it used to be a women's prison. So it still has kind of like a prison atmosphere to it. But when you go in, you know, the one floor is sort of the archives, but there's another floor that actually, at least when I was there, and Martin, correct me if I'm wrong, it still works this way. There is another floor that is lawyers and...

investigators who are still investigating potential Nazi war criminals.

Martin (02:31.585)
Exactly, and I think it's worth mentioning this relevance of the location and the Ludwigsburg institution of these investigators and prosecutors. The simple question, what would we know without these prosecutors' attempts to bring light in the darkness of Nazi mass crimes? We are well aware that the...

perpetrators themselves, at least in 1945 during the last weeks and months of Nazi empire, destroyed, burned all their traces, all their documents and only very few surviving. And yeah, the prosecutors in early West Germany began to build up.

something like a parallel documentation of all these Nazi mass crimes, about the Holocaust and other, let's say, genocides. And without these attempts, our knowledge, our scientific knowledge on the field would be very poor.

Waitman (03:55.81)
Yeah, and I should also mention that the first director, a guy named Aldo Butrucurel, he experienced significant resistance in trying to compile all this information. And it's due to his dedication, really, that we have a lot of the information that scholars like Martin, myself, and lots of others have been able to use to try to understand the Holocaust. Because he

he drove that system in a time in not in germany when let's say not everyone was super interested in uh... exploring and investigating and not seize for what they had done during the war

Martin (04:37.329)
Absolutely, and worth to have in mind the general mood in West German society and in the East one as well, it is similar. They denied any responsibility regarding national socialist dictatorship and the mass crimes and...

a famous film title in early West German history, The Murders are Living with Us. And that's exactly a description of the mood. So, mass perpetrators, Nazi perpetrators, lived in a democratic West German society. And...

almost nobody cares and for example Ludwigsburg, one of the very few positions trying to bring some light in this field of darkness and to bring justice to these mass crimes.

Waitman (05:53.67)
And I should mention, because you brought it up and it's worth for our viewers or our listeners, I suppose, to check it out. I'll maybe put a link. The Murders Are Among Us, it's an amazing film. It's the first feature film produced sort of independently in Germany after the war. But what makes it really interesting beyond just the, it's a really good film, is that even that film, which is deeply critical of German society.

and of sort of Nazis sort of remaining at large, it had its own issues with the director and like two of the main actors who have, we'll say problematic Nazi pasts themselves. Even though they were acting in this film and producing this film that was fairly ahead of its time, I think, in Germany, but they themselves had sort of a problematic past.

But let's move on to someone that has a clearly problematic past, which is Johan Niemann and the album of Sobibor Photographs. But obviously let's talk about Johan himself and sort of what his story is and how this comes about, how we know about his album and these kinds of things.

Martin (07:13.837)
Yes, Johann Niemann. So first, I could say he was until the publication of his photo collection and document collection in our edition. I researched for years. He was historically a nobody. So he died in October 14th, 1943.

as a deputy camp commander of Sobibor death camp. He was killed by Jewish resistance in one of the most remarkable and astonishing uprisings during Nazi occupation in Europe. And with that uprising, the

remaining survivors in the Sobibor death camp facilitated their liberty, facilitated to bring testimonies to the world about that death camp in occupied East Poland. So...

Johann Niemann and nobody until the publication of his really remarkable photo collection. Secondly, as I mentioned, deputy camp commander in Sobibor death camp, but he finally realized a remarkable career. So he grew up.

as a fifth of nine brothers and sisters of a poor, rather poor, farmer family in northern Germany, the German region of East Frisia. He grew up fifth of nine children.

Waitman (09:21.966)
Thank you.

Martin (09:33.957)
apprenticeship and finally he joined voluntarily a profession as a Nazi guard in a concentration camp. First in the Estherwegen concentration camp, this is not far from his village where he grew up in Föln.

And finally he moved to another famous Nazi concentration camp, which is Oranienburg camp, north of Berlin. And then because of his initiative, because of his confidence in Nazi ideology, he was transferred to so-called

euthanasia to the first Nazi genocide, killing 70,000 mentally ill, physically disabled or even only unusual in Nazi view, unusual persons in German Reich.

Martin (10:56.993)
expertise where Johann Nieman became part of. He was then transferred to the Shoah, to the Holocaust in Poland. He became, okay.

Waitman (11:07.714)
And if I just jump in really quick, what did he do? What was his job when he was in the T4 program, the T4 being the Nazi code name, Tiergartenstrasse number four, for the euthanasia program that Martin's talking about. What was his job? What was he doing?

Martin (11:25.849)
Yeah, so this group of people, armored SS, Waffen-SS concentration camp guards, they called themselves burners. Burners, so describing their daily task to burn the victims in the euthanasia program.

but even to put these victims in the Nazi gas chambers, these first National Socialist gas chambers during the euthanasia program. And this was his daily task, to kill the people, to burn their corpse, their murdered corpse, and to even plunder

their belongings, their corpse, looking for gold in the teeth and so on. Horrible daily work and he was willing to do so because he was so trusted by his superiors.

Waitman (12:48.01)
And then this is a great transition to, to Sobibor because, or I guess to other, other places before he gets to Sobibor. But one of the things that's important in the history of the so-called final solution is, is this translation of personnel from the euthanasia program, the so-called euthanasia program T4 to the Reinhard camps, to the extermination program and

because they have a certain amount of a certain, a particular set of skills, right?

Martin (13:19.321)
Yeah, so important, this kind of horrible expertise. And I think by mentioning this field of this range of expertise, we could learn something about a special Nazi system of power. Because Niemann and others,

have been transferred from euthanasia to the Nazi death camp of Operation Reinhardt, the Holocaust in Poland. And they have been transferred because of their expertise. I think our understanding of national socialist mass crimes

dictatorship is sometimes a little bit simplified, let's say. So I think in that circumstances, a particular question might be help. Beginning the Holocaust, having ideas to even kill millions of European Jews, I think it's...

really important to understand that this special practice has never been done before by the Nazis. So there's a lack of expertise. There is the question, would the perpetrators even be able or even be willing to fulfill their task? And these main questions open the fields

Martin (15:17.714)
to other aspects of, yeah, Nazi system of power. A will to realize initiative, a field, a room of maneuver, the proof of feasibility. These are expertise becoming so important.

in this phases of radicalization, of escalation of Nazi mass crimes. And this is exactly the field Johann Nieman and his comrades have been transferred to Poland after euthanasia.

Waitman (16:08.022)
And so he ends up next at Belzec, is that correct?

Martin (16:11.833)
Yeah, Belsaeg, the first operation Reinhardt, Aktion Reinhardt death camp, and they were put to an waste hill. And they were told to, well, build up a center able to kill

Tens of thousands of Polish Jews. And the structure was absolutely unknown. The system of murder, the victims, absolutely unknown. And these people around Niemann and others, they started to experiment.

to look for realization to kill tens of thousands and finally hundreds of thousands of people during Operation Reinhardt. And as we know, in the present, these attempts has been successful. And they find their way to build up death camps.

often renovated, often modernized and varied in their structure. And step by step they realized this horrible system that has never been experienced before. This is, we could say, this is some scientific way

kill as many people as possible. And it has never, as I said, it has never been done before. That's important to see that people like Niemann are real pioneers during the Holocaust.

Waitman (18:28.254)
And then it's his promotion, I guess, to Sobibor. That's an evidence of his, I'm using scare codes here, but you know, of his success in doing what he's doing.

Martin (18:42.221)
That's it. So he was responsible as a burner in New Thanasia. He became pioneer in Belsitz death camp, responsible for the upper area, so called, in Belsitz death camp, where the gas chambers were in function.

He was responsible for that area. That's why the people transferred him in spring in early 1942 to Sobibor death camp, the second death camp just in the stage of construction. And Johann Niemann supported the...

construction of Sobibor Death Camp. He helped building up the first gas chambers in Sobibor. And that's why he was promoted in late summer of 1942, the same year to deputy commander in Sobibor.

Waitman (20:01.074)
And how is, I mean, what did, what testimony do we have about him as a person? I mean, how did, how did survivors remember him? What, what, what was he like? What did he do? How did he behave? Um, as, as commandant.

Martin (20:15.277)
Yeah, we have telling testimonies by Jewish survivors regarding Niemann. One interrogation, a female survivor from a Soviet war death camp told the prosecutors that one day Niemann

came to his comrades in the canteen, in the public room for the Nazi perpetrators, in the death camp, telling them during next time, Salad would arrive in Sobibor. And he was mentioning by this term, Salad,

the Jewish victims deported from the Netherlands to Sobibor death camp. As we know, more than 30,000 Netherlandish Jews were murdered in Sobibor. And I think it's quite telling. Niemann...

talking about tens of thousands of human beings in that way, salad would arrive in Sobibor.

Waitman (21:50.13)
What did he mean by salad?

Martin (21:51.905)
Yes, so salad, it's quite common in the Netherlands. So as a product of Netherlandish agriculture, you know. So Niemann himself was a son of a farmer and he has been well known.

of the agriculture products from the Netherlands. And it's only, yeah, a joyful, ironic term for people from the Netherlands. And he talked about the people in that way. And I think, yeah, the...

dehumanization of human beings. So important, so typical by realizing this amount of mass murder. This is described very well in his wording.

Waitman (23:03.298)
So as we're talking about sources, let's talk about the album. It's a really amazing piece of documentary evidence. And for the listeners, all of the photographs that we're going to talk about today are freely available at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum online from their digital collections. And I will put the link in the show notes so that if you want, as you're listening to us talk about perhaps some of these specific photos, you can

click on the link and find them. And they're nicely cataloged for us. But Martin, can you tell us a little about where this album comes from? And then we can talk more about what it tells us about both Niemann as well as the Holocaust, but also about survivors and victims as well, because even though they're not necessarily the focal point, they do appear in some of these images.

Martin (23:58.465)
Okay, the famous Niemann collection. As a whole, we are talking about 361 photos, black and white, and about two entire photo albums, and many additional written documents. Letter from Niemann himself, postcards, official letters from the...

most important chancery of the Führer, his main institution organizing euthanasia as well as the Nazi death camps during Operation Reinhardt. And this Nieman collection is something like a private memory.

built of these more than 300 photos for his personal belonging. So this is private, this is not official. He has something like a hobby, collecting memoirs, photographs from his personal career. And that's exactly this remarkable Niemann collection.

And I think it's the largest one, private collection during Operation Reinhardt and the Holocaust, belonging or showing so many...

Martin (25:44.361)
from mass killing, showing a personal career, showing camaraderie and so many aspects, showing his wife and other women as perpetrators as well. And this is the Nieman collection.

Waitman (26:05.758)
And is, is just as an aside in what, how much did his wife know? Was she with him at these places or do we know how much she knew in terms of what he was doing specifically?

Martin (26:19.169)
A very good question on Henriette Niemann, Johann Niemann's wife. So she grew up actually in the same village in Föln in East Frisia. And we have a little photo, black and white, showing Henriette together with Johann Niemann.

not far from one of the euthanasia killing sites in Bernburg, in the German region of Anhalt, not far from the Bernburg killing site. I think it's worth the question, what did they talk together with Niemann comrades during this visit of the wife?

Did she really know? And we have further relevance in bank account books of Henriette's and his father's showing one detail the Jewish survivors were describing in testimonies again and again.

plunder by the Nazis, the private plunder, the robbery of the murderer people by the German SS and by the Traveniki Guard as well. So in a huge amount they plundered valuables, money, jewelry for their own belongings.

Waitman (28:14.446)
And you have evidence of this from Pankit Counts. Wow.

Martin (28:16.985)
Yeah, that's it. I found in the house of Henriettes in summer of 2019, I found two telling bank account books. And we have to talk about the discovery of the entire collection.

Waitman (28:43.882)
Yeah, definitely.

Martin (28:45.541)
Hermann Adams, the regional researcher, retired businessman who first discovered some of the photos and the albums, so important for the discovery of the collection. And together with him, I returned.

Waitman (29:05.682)
And how were they, just before we, how were they discovered initially? I mean, how did, how did we get from not knowing that they existed to knowing that they existed?

Martin (29:15.681)
It's such an amazing story. So, Herman Adams, as I said, retired businessman and regional historian. He read a book accidentally, a book by Thomas Toivy-Blood.

one of the Sobibor survivors. He rewrote the book The Forgotten Revolts about the remarkable Sobibor uprising. And in this book by Thomas Blatt, Hermann Adams, the researcher,

was thrilled to read that the deputy camp commander Johann Niemann grew up in his own region in East Frisia. So he went to the village of Völn, he visited the war memorial and Johann Niemann's name

written on the memorial up to now with a comment. And finally, he came in touch with the grandson of Johann Niemans. And during several meetings after a period of collecting confidence, he was

The grandson finally showed to Hermann Adams the first two albums and many photographs and that's how Hermann Adams discovered this remarkable collection.

Waitman (31:19.414)
So this is something that the grandson, I guess the family knew existed for a long time and just had been sort of sitting on it.

Martin (31:29.593)
Yeah, some of the collection was stored in the kitchen in any dark corner and the grandson wasn't aware of the responsibility of his grandfather Johann Nieman. So he never met him.

Martin (31:59.429)
died in October 1943 and the grandson grew up in the house of his grandmother Henriette, wife of Johann Nieman and he finally hadn't a clue about the function, about the dedication of his grandfather and step by step he learned in...

communication with Hermann Adams and me, he learned about the role of his grandfather, the history of this family, and he finally decided to bring up this unique photo collection to the public. I think this is a remarkable decision as well.

that the grandson absolutely understood the value and possible impact for the public and for science, for historiography.

Waitman (33:10.19)
And it is an amazing story. Do we know anything about the family discussions or lack thereof with Henrietta, you know, from the time that Johann was killed to the time, I don't know when she died, but did she talk about this? What was her sort of attitude in the post-war period to this, if we know anything about it?

Martin (33:42.837)
I think we could assume that Henriette Nieman never informed, never talked with his two children, a son and a daughter, to the history of their father. And she denied.

she denied to inform the children. And that's why the grandson, well, was absolutely uninformed about this aspect.

Waitman (34:30.67)
It's always fascinating to me when these albums come up, that they were never destroyed. It makes you wonder if...

if Henrietta sat down and looked at them, you know, because she must have known that at least, at least the Sobibor photograph, which are very clearly in a concentration camp, were not good things to have around, but yet they haven't been destroyed either.

Martin (35:03.181)
Yeah, this is a fascinating detail. Well, Henriette Nieman, after the killing of her husband, she became in touch again with a SS member.

from the Netherlands after World War II. So we could assume that she was really Nazi too. And nevertheless, as you said, nevertheless she never destroyed the collection. And I think it's quite striking because that...

that leads us to the assumption that she

Martin (36:05.297)
She hadn't pressure by German justice to do so. She was fine. She had her daily life in East Frisia as a farmer again. And West German justice never rang the bell of her house.

asking for any evidence regarding the Nazi mass crimes. And that's why the collection finally has been preserved. And many other examples, we can assume that perpetrators, former perpetrators...

Martin (37:00.321)
immediately after World War II at least destroyed their photos, destroyed their albums and other documentation. So it leads to the assumption she felt safe and she was fine with her history.

Waitman (37:21.238)
And one of the, and this is a weird way of saying it, but one of the, I guess, uplifting or hopeful things as an historian, you know, that the album brings up is that these, that even, you know, 80 years or so after the fact, at least some of these documents, these sources are still out there, you know, and hopefully, you know, as

time goes on, we'll have more that will help us from both survivors and perpetrators and everyone else to sort of help us understand this process. But it's always, in some ways as an historian, as a scholar, it's always heartening when one of these albums or a set of documentation comes to the light because it means that there is, you know, out there in attics and, you know, people's houses potentially, you know, more information that can help us understand the past.

So I think that's always a positive, even if it's kind of weird to be glad that a sort of Nazi album has come to light. But I think it's, as you point out, and as you point out in your book as well, I mean, this is a useful, important piece of evidence. And I think we should probably shift to talking about that. You know, what does this album, and specifically perhaps the photographs at Sobibor, what does it tell us that we didn't already know?

you know, before we had access to these photographs.

Martin (38:47.573)
Well, I could tell you for us on the evidence. And let us be clear. All in all, 361 photos, two albums, and the rest lose photos black and white. So the first photo album.

Waitman (38:52.987)
Hehehe

Martin (39:14.174)
With the official inscription every SS member could buy in Oranienburg concentration camp. Second SS desk unit, so the SS guard from Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Johann Nieman was a member of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp guard, the inner circle even, until his transferring to euthanasia. In this album consisting of 116 photos, you could follow the personal career of Johann Nieman. So the first...

the first examples of Estherwegen concentration camp, Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and the surroundings of his three killing sites, his participation in Nazi euthanasia, or Action T4 as a euphemism. He was in Grafeneck, Kase,

first in early 1940, second in Bran third in Bernburg, as I mentioned before. Then he moved to Operation Reinhardt. This album is somehow depicting his personal career.

Martin (41:06.529)
of hobby, camaraderie, unsuspicious landscape and little houses and so on. Never showing the victims, never showing his participation on the Nazi mass murder. Let's talk about the second album.

I'm calling it the Berlin Album. It shows all in all 80 photos of a really remarkable trip from 22 Traveniki guards. So the non-German, mostly non-German support for Operation Reinhardt.

an interesting field as well, the role, the importance, the relevance of the so-called Treveniki guards. And he as a head of this trip to Berlin from Sobibor and Treblinka death camp to the rice capital and surrounding Potsdam, a trip

as a reward for the participation in the Holocaust. And in this album, you can really follow the who is who of responsibilities in Operation Reinhardt. Because in Berlin...

officials of the Chancellor of the Führer, Chancellor of the Führer, Kanzlei des Führers, the main institution for the operation Reinhardt desk camps. Let the vacation trip through Berlin have their talks with the people and yeah,

Martin (43:20.193)
acknowledgement for these mass murders. And apart from these two albums, additional many photographs and for example 61 photos of Sobibor, never seen before and they are depicting, they are showing a lot of the death camp

of the personal and of Nazi must murder daily life in death camp during the Holocaust.

Waitman (44:02.506)
And so can you tell us a little bit, because I'm looking at the photographs, and again, for the listeners, they'll be linked in the show notes. But there are some really interesting ones of them sitting on a porch, drinking. There are some women there as well. And then there's at least one photograph that seems to show prisoners, actually, in the background. Can you talk a little about, you know,

how this, what these photographs of Sobibor add to our understanding of how the camp worked and also just what it was like there for both prisoners, both victims and perpetrators.

Martin (44:48.061)
I think these Sobibor photographs from the Niemann collection are showing us a very particular inside view towards the death camp. As you mentioned, in only two black and white photographs, in the background we can see...

obviously some Jewish slave laborers, some at that time survivors of the death camp function. So it's obvious that Johann Nieman hadn't interested or to collect photographs from the real...

function of his side in Sobibor. So he was working every day in murdering the people, the victims, arriving from the deportation trains in the death camp. He was

well aware about the actual function of Sobibor. And it seems he hadn't any interest to collect these photographs. Up to the contrary, he collected daily life, idyllic motif, camaraderie, sunshine, nice buildings.

showing the houses of the Nazi SS personnel in Sobibor. And this is, we could say fake, a fake story about the actual Sobibor death camp, showing only one side and denying the real function.

Martin (47:10.685)
And scientifically, we have to decipher these fakes about the Sobibor photos. In very few of the black and white photos, we can see details from the real dedication of this murder site.

And this comes to be interesting. So we see, for example, in the background, the chimney of the Sobibor gas chamber building. And we see on the other side some steel arm from an excavator brought to Sobibor to.

burn the corpse of the murderer and only in very tiny little details you see with a careful examination you see the real dedication of Sobibor death camp. This is, and we have to deal with it carefully, this is the view, the focus of Nazi perpetrators.

And by deciphering this fake view, we could nevertheless even learn from the photos and bring it together with the memoirs of the Jewish survivors to offer the real history of Sobibor death camp and Operation Reinhardt.

and the Holocaust as a whole.

Waitman (49:05.53)
Well, and I should point out, one of the reasons that this album and these photographs are so important is that we have very little visual evidence of really all of the Reinhard camps. But Sobibor in particular, and also particularly with the Reinhard camps, there's nothing left today for the most part at most of these sites. At Sobibor...

If you visit, and I highly recommend people to get out there because they just have opened a new memorial site, and their museum, the Sobibor Museum, is fantastic. But at Sobibor today, the train station is still there, the ramp where Jews were offloaded is still there, and the commandant's house is still there. But most of the buildings and all of the apparatus of extermination,

gas chambers, the fences, everything was destroyed by the Nazis themselves during the war. And so we have very little evidence of these camps, whereas for lots of the other camps, particularly in Germany, there's actually quite a lot of photographic evidence that remains as well as sort of physical evidence today.

Any of any photograph is really, really important. And what Martin's done that he's talking about here is, when you sort of look at these photographs forensically, you can begin to see if you know what you're looking for, which is why we have scholars like Martin. When you know what you're looking for, you can start to see the actual photographs of the evidence of extermination.

which is the ultimate sort of black hole of our knowledge because we really don't have any images of those particular parts, even of these Reinhardt camps. So if you imagine sort of concentric circles of unknown, the Reinhardt camps in particular are not very well photographed. And even when they are, the parts of the camps that are committed

Waitman (51:30.582)
to film are not the gas chambers, not generally speaking, those areas of the camp. And one of the things that you can see, I think Martin, correct me if I'm wrong, but in the background of a few of these photographs, you can see the sorting sheds where Jews were forced to go before they went to the gas chambers, as well as I think in one of these, you can see in the background,

what's called the tube, right, which is the pathway from the reception area to the gas chambers. Am I right? Is that?

Martin (52:09.049)
Now, the so-called tube or Himmelfahrtstraße, as the survivors called it, as the victims called it, in Treblinka, death camp, it's not visible actually in this Niemann photos. But yeah, you are right. In tiny details, you see the real dedication.

I think it's worth mentioning again, we wouldn't be able to decipher these photographs without the testimonies of the survivors. These survivors fighting for their freedom in the uprising October 14, 1943 and this is the key opportunity.

Waitman (52:53.166)
Mm-hmm.

Martin (53:07.701)
to give relevance and evidence about the history of Sobibor death camp to the world. And we wouldn't have been able to understand the Niemann collection without all these testimonies of survivors.

and the victims of Nazi mass crimes and Nazi dictatorship. And I think this is worth realizing that the survivors are the key factor for our knowledge in the present and in the future too. And let's...

Let's mention Operation Reinhardt. And I think the Nieman collection is important by giving visual evidence regarding Operation Reinhardt, as you mentioned it before. And I think it's so important. When I'm teaching Holocaust studies at Stuttgart University,

Most of the students aren't really aware about Operation Reinhardt. One third of the Holocaust victims died during Operation Reinhardt, the Holocaust in Poland. 1.8 million people at least. One third of the victims of the Holocaust.

On the other hand, what do we know about the mass shootings in occupied Soviet Union? More than two million victims died during these mass shootings. So we have the evidence that two-thirds of the victims, the Jewish victims of the Holocaust died in ranges rather...

Martin (55:24.049)
underrepresented in our common memory and history. And I think it's so important to see this evidence, to read the testimonies of so many survivors and to take it seriously to have a commemoration.

on Nazi mass crimes and the Holocaust in particular, which could lead to a rather justified situation regarding the mass crimes that happened.

Waitman (56:10.405)
That's a really good point and it's one that I think is, to put it another way, it's not letting the Nazis have the last word on their crimes, right? Because when you look at these, and I highly recommend listeners, please go check this album out. Look at it. Look at all the photographs, not just the Sobibor ones.

But when you look at the Sobibor photographs of, again, as Martin's pointed out, predominantly the SS living and working space, you know, there are these nice little, lovely little houses, these lovely little white houses with gardens and flowers and things like this. And you know, the SS are, you know, having drinks on a porch and they're riding horses. And it presents, you know, as I think Martin's pointed out, it presents the sort of curated view that

Neiman and those like him wanted to imagine that was what they were doing and this is what life was like But is by definition excluding the reason that they all were there which was the mass murder of you know hundreds of thousands in their case hundreds of thousands of human beings and so when you take the survivor side of it and You know apply it then you get

the things that we've already heard, you know, the ways in which Niemann behaved, the fact that he was, you know, a, a joyful killer and not at all sort of conflicted in what he was doing. And it's there that you get the full picture. And then that is what makes the sort of very perpetrator focused photographs. It gives them even more meaning because you know what's going on and you know, you know, what these men,

are engaged in, right? And then, you know, this whole piece about Henrietta is fascinating to me as well, because I'm always fascinated at sort of the family interactions, you know, and this is particularly useful, I think, with the new film, Zone of Interest, that just came out, because it deals with this whole idea of the domestic family life, and, you know, what is the role of wives, and...

Waitman (58:29.246)
in women in particular in terms of supporting their husbands and also enjoying the fruits of their crimes. So Martin, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time. Before we end, I always want to ask our question here, which is if you had to recommend one book on the subject of the Holocaust that you found particularly meaningful or

or insightful or cause you to think differently. With the understanding of course, that there is no one book that can explain the whole thing. What might you suggest as that book that was important to you?

Martin (59:15.001)
Well, only one book?

Waitman (59:18.27)
Only one, you only get one book.

Martin (59:23.446)
Okay, it's important because I could seem somehow selfish, but at present times I would recommend our study on national socialist relationship towards the Arab world.

and it exists in English translation. It's called the remarkable title Nazi Palestine. And shortly there is in my view the understanding that October 7th, last year's October 7th we...

couldn't imagine without the impact of Nazi ideology during World War II and continuous acceptance towards the present. And well, I recommend Nazi Palestine because it gives some idea.

that the conflict in the Middle East didn't start with the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, but in the decades before, in the three decades before, and this is most important for a better understanding.

Waitman (01:01:03.626)
And I have this on my list and it probably means that I'm going to ask you to come back on the podcast and talk about this particular book because it's super important from a variety of perspectives. And whenever I'm talking to World War II historians, World War II history buffs, I always bring up the Einsatzgruppe of Africa as an example of why Rommel is not a great...

a great human being and a great, you know, a clean, a clean Wehrmacht general, but that's a different story for, for another time. Thank you so much for coming on Martin. I'll link to his book along with his co-authors, Anna Lepper and Klaus Michael Malmann. Really important. And Jürgen Matthäus, sorry. Jürgen Matthäus is the other one. I apologize. I know you've written with, with

Martin (01:01:38.289)
Exactly.

Martin (01:01:53.87)
Jürgen, Mateusz. That's it.

Waitman (01:02:02.87)
with Dr. Maulman before. You can find Martin as well in those show notes. I have a link to his website. He's also on Twitter occasionally. I have his handle there. But please, please do check out the link to the photographs because it gives you a chance to really look at, you know, primary source documents and the ones that we've talked about today directly from the...

United States Holocaust Memorial Museums Archives. As always, if you're enjoying, and I'm using that in scare quotes because I understand the topic is difficult, but if you're finding this podcast to be useful, insightful, making you think, please subscribe and please leave a comment or review on the various sites were available on the podcast website itself, as well as on Apple and Spotify and all the places where you find

your podcasts. So thanks again, Martin. Thanks for coming.

Martin (01:03:06.989)
Redmond, it was really inspiring. I appreciate and thanks a lot.

Waitman (01:03:13.374)
All right, thanks.