Postcard Binder – "The Black Album" – An Early Visual Documentation of Nazi Crimes on European Soil, April 1940

Postcard Binder – "The Black Album" – An Early Visual Documentation of Nazi Crimes on European Soil, April 1940
The Black Album. Tel-Aviv: The Anti-Nazi League, April 1940. Hebrew, English and French. Complete postcard binder comprising ten postcards.
This binder is a very early public visual documentation, maybe the first of its kind, of Nazi crimes on European soil, especially in vanquished Poland. The anti-Nazi league, which published the binder in April 1940, aimed to set up "propaganda and publicity in Israel and abroad against the Nazi regime, the Nazi spirit and racial hate". These ideas have been realized in this binder; not only in the photographs printed on the postcards, but also and especially in the introduction added by the anti-Nazi league members. Printed on the inside cover: "Hitlerism means return to the savagery of the dark Middle Ages. In Poland, the Jews are compelled to wear on their backs the yellow badge as reproduced on the envelope of the Black Album. The Black Album contains the first series of pictures disclosing Nazi atrocities in Poland. The Black Album gives a vivid description of the Nazi regime and its cruel systems. Everybody is hereby enabled to unmask Hitlerism by sending the post-cards of the Album to his friends and acquaintances all over the world". Each postcard is captioned – "Death in Hitler's step", "Nazi hangmen at work", "Migration of nations to the gates of death", "German production of 'ashes industry'" and more. The postcards are accompanied by captions, specifying some of the methods of Nazi brutality and extermination which were publicly verified and published only years later: death of thousands from disease, cold and starvation; execution on a daily basis and hanging bodies on gallows in central streets in Polish towns; forced labor; cremating bodies and more. The postcards are titled in English. Introduction in Hebrew and English. Captions of postcards are in Hebrew and French.[8] pp, 10 postcards, [8] pp. Postcards: 10x14 cm. Binder: 10.5X16.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains, including some dampstains. One of the postcards is detached. Minor blemishes to the margins of several postcards. Creases and minor blemishes to cover.