Extermination of Polish Jews - Album of Pictures

Extermination of Polish Jews - Album of Pictures / Zaglada Zydostwa Polskiego - Album Zdjec. Lodz: Central Jewish Historical Committee in Poland, 1945. Probably the single most important documentary photo book on the Holocaust ever published, useful not only as part of the documentary record, but also as part of the historiography of the Holocaust, since this book became the defining collection of photographic images from the period, not only for European Jews, but also for the world at large (especially Europe). It was published in 1945 by survivors with memories still fresh and a need to document what they and their communities had gone through. 252 black and white photos, showing the Jewish settlements at the onset of the German occupation, the ghettos into which they were later crowded, and finally photographs of the atrocities committed in the forced labor camps and the extermination camps. The photographs were mostly taken as mementos by German soldiers, and are still as shocking today as they were in 1945. The introductory text and the image captions are in Polish, Russian, English, French, Yiddish and Hebrew. 25X34 cm. Fair-poor condition (wear and tear to cover, cover detached and glued, some detached pages, foxing).