In 2007, the Höcker album surfaced – the only known album of photographs showing the everyday life and leisure of Nazis who worked at Auschwitz. Based on these photographs, Annette Behrens researched the life and person of the album’s owner, SS officer Karl-Friedrich Höcker, adjutant to the last commandant of Auschwitz, Richard Baer. The images, taken at a popular holiday cottage, show high-ranking officers and auxiliary personnel, who are depicted living a “normal” life, detached from their horrendous crimes. Behrens investigates how events that were long suppressed or deemed forgotten can resurface in collective memory, raising disconcerting questions.
128 pages, 21 x 30 cm, softcover, FW: Books (Amsterdam).