Chilling photo album of smiling Nazis relaxing at resort built by Auschwitz prisoners revealed
Looking at the bright smiles and laughing faces of the men and women in these photos, you𝕴 would be forgiven for thinking they were a group of friends enjoying a fun summer holiday.
The people 🍸in these black and🍌 white images appear to not have a care in the world as they are snapped sunbathing, dancing and drinking with glee.
Looking at the bright smiles and laughing faces of the men and women in these photos, you would be forgiven for th✤inking they were a group of friends enjoying a fun summer holiday.
The people in these black and white images appear to not have a care in the woꦇrld as they are snapped sunbathing, dancing and drinking with glee.
What you cannot see however is the stomach-turning crimes against human🐷ity unfolding just kilometres away at the notoriously evil🌌 Auschwitz concentration camp, where these figures worked.
The dark reality is that the smiling men and women in these happy holiday snaps are Nazis enjoying some leisurely time off from participating in the mass extermination of over six million people during the Holocaus▨t.
Most of the pictures were taken at Solahütte, a recreation resort built by prisoners for their capto🎃rs’ 🍃to enjoy.
It was located just south of Auschwitz on 𒈔the Sola River and was freque𒀰nted by Nazis as a place to rest and recharge during their time off.
The candid images, which have recently been circulating online, give a chilling insight into the parallel lives of💝 the guards who worked at the camp, which saw over 1.1 million people murdered during World War II.
Smiling♓ female guards are seen happily posing for images, beaming officers sunbathe peacefully in deck chairs, while a happy gas chamber supervisor smiles widely as he listens to music.
These eerie snaps are among 116 taken between June 1944 and January 1945, t🔯he last six mꦡonths that Auschwitz was in operation.
The album was put together by camp guard Karl Höcker, w🧸ho joined the SS in 1933 and the Nazi party in 1937.
He described the album as being a memento of the “good times”🔜 he enjoyed while working ꦜat Auschwitz.
Höcker was captured by t💎he British in April 1945 following the surrender of the German Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, but was released the follow🌃ing year.
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He was eventually sentenced to just seven years in prison in 1965 for aiding and abetting in over 1,000 murders at Auschwitz. He was released in 1970 and worked as a ba🔯nk te🌊ller until his retirement.
On May 3, 1989, a district court in the German city of Bielefeld sentenced him to a further four years imprisonment for his involvement in the gassing murders of prisoners at the Majdanek concentration camp in Polandꦇ.
Höcker was released from prison in ༺1992 and died on January 30, 2000.
His haunting photo album from h♕is time as a Nazi was discovered by an anonymous American counterintelligence officer who was stationed in Frankfurt after Germany’s surrender in 1945.
Described online as “faces of pure evil”, the cheerful images were taken during Auschwitz’s most lethal period, where 400,000 Hungarian Jews were being murdered in the gas chambers as an integral part of Hitler’s ‘final sꦍolution’.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz 𝔉II, was the largest Nazi concentration camp, established in 1941 in the Polish village of Brzezinka.
The detailed notes on the photographs, and those featured in the images, provide a rare insight𝔍 into life around Auschwitz.
They feature notorious S.S. camp officers, including Rudolf Höss, Jo💙sef Kramer, Franz Hössler and Dr. Josef Mengele, otherwise kno🎐wn as the ‘Angel of Death’ for his evil medical experiments.
The very first pictures in the album depict Richard Baer, t🐓he last Auschwitz camp commandant between 1944 and 1945, and Baer’s adjutant, Karl Höcker.
The💖 last pictures in the albu🍎m show guards lighting a Yule tree at Christmas time and of a hunting trip in the first week of January 1945. Two weeks later, the Nazis began evacuating the camps, with Auschwitz being liberated on January 27, 1945.
Museum archivist Reb꧃eca Erberlding recognised the historic importance of the album and the eerie significance of the seemingly “nor꧋mal” looking happy snaps.
“They do no🔯t look evil (the Nazis); they’re smiling. They’re playing wit༒h their dogs,” she said.
“They look like they 𒁃might resemble a neighbour that you🐼 have. And, yes, that is correct, that humans have this capacity.”
Solahütte resort was converted into a restaurant at the Międzybrodzie Bialskie holiday resort, before the building ⭕was eventually completel🙈y demolished in 2011.
Horrors over the wall
The eerie life of Rudolf Höss was recently brought to light in the Oscar-winning film, The Zone of Interest.
The movie is based on the haunting day-to-day life of Höss, his wife and five children, who live just metres from Auschwi﷽tz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Höss was the longest serving commandment of the camp and personally oversaw mass murd𒆙er there for more than three years.
The family’s home was located directly next to th൩e crematorium’s chimney, which pumped out ash anꦰd smoke 24 hours a day from the mass of bodies.
Those who were chosen to be killed in the gas chambers were not told what w⭕as about to happen to them, with most believing they were sim൲ply taking a shower.
After undressing, they were ta𒁏ken into the gas chamber and locked inside. But horrifically, instead of water, it was Zyklon B that came out of the shower heads, killing everyone in the room within minutes.
Afterwards, Sonderkommando prisoners dragged the corpses o🧔ut and cut off the women’s hair 🍃and removed all metal dental work and jewelry.
The bodi🔥es were then burned in pitꦑs, on pyres, or mainly in the crematorium furnaces. Bones that did not burn completely were ground to powder.
This, along with the ashes, w♏ere dumped in nearby rivers, ponds, or scattered in the fields as fertiliser and used as landfill for uneven ground.
“Every wish that my wife or children expressed was granted to t🉐hem,” Höss wrote in his autobiography.
“My wife’s garden was a paradise of flowers.”
The family lived at the home until Noveꦐmber 1944, when Höss moved to Ravensbrück women’s concentration ♛camp in Germany in order to oversee further mass killings.
Following Nazi Germany’s defeat, Höss evaded capture for nearlꦐy a year before being arrested. He was sentenced to death in 1947 ﷺand hung next to the crematorium at Auschwitz.
In the film, the true evil of what was happening just over the wall is never shown, yet💯 the viewer can hear the horrific sounds o🦂f human suffering from the camp throughout the movie.
British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer said it was more about “what you don’t see” in the movie, telling the New York Times that his mission behind the production was highlighting🐈 the “normal” elꦕements of the family’s life.
“I wanted to dismantle the idea of them aﷺs anomalies, as almost supernatural,” he told the outlet.
“You know, the idea that they came from the skies and ran amok,🎃 but thank God that’s not us and it’s never going to happen again. I wanted to show that these were crimes committed by Mr. and Mrs. Smith at No. 26.”
