Capturing Bolshevism: SS Photographs of Soviet POWs at Concentration Camps
Capturing Bolshevism: SS Photographs of Soviet POWs at Concentration Camps
Author(s): Lukas MeisselSubject(s): Photography, Local History / Microhistory, Military history, Studies in violence and power, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Fascism, Nazism and WW II, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien
Keywords: Bolshevism; Soviet POW's; Mauthausen concentration camps; SS men;
Summary/Abstract: The article examines photographs taken by SS men at the Mauthausen concentration camp. The focus is on pictures of Soviet POWs from October 1941. A negative strip serves as a case study to highlight the importance of a critical method-driven approach for interpretations of visual sources, specifically perpetrator pictures. The images are analysed according to an adapted version of Ulrike Pilarczyk’s and Ulrike Mietzner’s serial-iconographic photo analysis to differentiate between description and interpretation. The aim is to contextualise the photos and link them to ideological meanings of the pictures for those who took or commissioned them.
Journal: S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation.
- Issue Year: 9/2022
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 58-70
- Page Count: 13
- Language: English