A rare photograph showing Jews in the middle of an aktion

A rare photograph showing Jews in the middle of an aktion

A rare photograph showing Jews gathered on a city street with their belongings, as part of a violent Aktion carried out by the Nazis. A large group of Jews is led on their final journey to the trains that will take them to concentration and extermination camps. The photographer who took the photo before of us risked his life, if he had been caught he would have been executed on the spot. Early 1940s. Extremely rare.

The aktion carried out by the SS or Gestapo soldiers included a call for Jews, accompanied by an order from the local authorities, to gather at a central site (the city square or a central crossroads) at a certain time. Jews or their representatives who wanted to know the destination of the deportation were sometimes told that they would be taken to "labor camps" in "Eastern Europe", and they were even asked to send a letter tell about it to to their relatives. Jews were told that they could take money and valuables with them in their belongings. In every ghetto or Jewish compound, several aktions were carried out weeks or months apart. (In the "Great Aktion" from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, mass deportations of thousands of Jews took place every day, starting in July 1942)

The Germans took care of the detailed and complete management of the Aktion. When the Jews were gathered at the transport site, they were besieged by armed forces, transported to the designated concentration and extermination camp. In Aktions, the police and local residents usually used great violence against the Jews, and many Jews were brutally murdered even before the deportation itself took place. Jews who disobeyed the order instructing them to be collected and deported were persecuted by the local and Nazi occupation authorities, who supervised them. Individuals with wealth or connections managed to escape the Aktion and hide until the end of Nazi rule in their area.

The Germans conducted the Aktions in great order and organization until the last stages of the war (although they took resources in manpower, fuel, means of transportation and the like from Nazi Germany).

The place where the aktion was carried out was not identified by us.

Size: 15x11 cm. Time stains and moisture stains. moderate condition.