In 1929, this was a simple picture: boys playing together on a street in Bremen, Germany. But events would soon carry these boys – some of whom were Jewish – to very different fates. Phoebe McDougal of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum tells us the touching story of how they found each other again years after the Holocaust.
IranWire’s Photos That Define the Holocaust series reviews photographs, chosen by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum historians, staff, and Youth Ambassadors. Each photo tells a unique story of the Holocaust. Some depict daily life for Jews during the Second World War, some expose antisemitic Nazi propaganda, while others show instances of clandestine documentation of Nazi persecution. The videos also demonstrate how photographs can be used to understand the past, humanize historical events, and honor victims.
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So this Photograph that we’re looking at was taken several years before the Holocaust began in 1929 in Germany as you can see from the photograph there are several young boys standing together grouped um kind of as a group of friends hanging out on the street with a bicycle
There are two boys who are s and their names are Beno and gar and they were Jewish children their father owned a bicycle shop right on the street they’re standing on there are many other children in the photograph some of which are were not Jewish including a young
Child on the far left hand side of the photograph whose name is Gunter in 1929 this looked like a pretty normal scene that we’d see today of children playing together of hanging out with a bicy icle on the street we do know with historical hindsight however that in 10 years in
Less than a decade their lives would be very different and not normal at all on the evening of Christal knck which was a night of uh state sponsored and directed Terror against Jewish Community Beno and gared now 10 years older were arrested Beno was sent to an early concentration camp called soenh
Housen on the same evening their mother was shot and killed as were many other Jewish civilians after Crystal knock Beno and gared were lucky enough to be released and they were able to escape Germany for Canada however their story doesn’t end there 60 years after the end of World
War II gared received a letter and in this letter from one of the boys in the photograph good in the left hand side uh was a photograph and this is the photograph we’re looking at today of all the boys playing together Gunter wrote to ask gared how he was doing he enclosed the
Photograph and he reminisced about their times together as young boys playing on the street where their parents actually both owned businesses before the Nazis came to power gared wrote back to Gunter asking what his life had been like after the Nazis came to power and Gunter replied that he ended up being a
Concentration camp guard in a concentration camp called Bergen bellson he was quick to assure gerd that he had never touched a Jew during his time at Bergen bson gared wrote back asking him how he felt about his job knowing what we know now of what happened at the
Concentration camp and what he saw there and gunar never replied I think this photograph is a really good opportunity for us to talk about a common misconception about the Holocaust and that misconception is that only High officials and ranking Nazis and Hitler perpetrated the Holocaust and that’s not actually the case we know
Very well that the Holocaust would not be possible without the ordinary participation of citizens across Europe and in Germany such as Gunter this Photograph gives us a chance to think about his statement the fact that he never touched a Jew but he was still a concentration camp guard there’s a way
That he’s able to rationalize that statement that’s very interesting to me and reminds us that as humans there’s a very psychological component of what happened during the Holocaust that genocide is a social act that it takes participation of an entire Society and I think this photograph is a really interesting reminder of That