Perpetrators’ photographs of atrocities demonstrate widespread public approval and impunity

Evidence

At the very least, the existence of large numbers of photos indicate something about the widespread nature of these acts of sexualized torture. Of the photo exhibit ‘War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht, 1942–1944,’ which toured Germany and Austria during the late 1990s – an exhibit that contained hundreds of photos mostly taken by the perpetrators of crimes against Jews – Omer Bartov writes: ‘What many Germans found hard to take was that the exhibition demonstrated in the most graphic manner the complicity of Wehrmacht soldiers in the Holocaust and other crimes of the region, especially in the occupied parts of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.’ If the soldiers all knew of these crimes, and close to twenty million soldiers passed through the ranks of the Wehrmacht, then it follows that Germans knew much more about the Holocaust than they were prepared to acknowledge after the war. A debate has long raged among historians about what it took to get so many ordinary Germans to participate in, approve of, or remain indifferent to the Holocaust. The photographs seem to confirm that crimes against Jews had public approval. The record of abuse suggests, too, that there was no fear of reprisal. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 158

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Abu Ghraib photo evidence and speaks to the ‘banality of evil’ and ordinary-soldier-complicity debates familiar from Arendt and Goldhagen. — connects to: Posthumous martyr images of ordinary victims can unite a divided public — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 215
• SEED: An essay comparing the evidentiary role of atrocity photographs in the Wehrmacht exhibit versus Abu Ghraib — what each dataset proves or fails to prove about collective will.