The Auschwitz Album is a unique photographic record of the Holocaust of the Second World War. A collection of photographs taken inside a Nazi death camp, it is the only surviving pictorial evidence of the extermination process from inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp (with the exception of three additional photographs taken by inmates who were issued with Sonderkommandos). Selection at the Auschwitz camp in 1944, where the Nazis chose whom to kill immediately and whom to use as slave labor or for medical experimentation. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... National Socialism redirects here. ... A death camp is either a concentration camp, the important (though not necessarily single) function of which is to facilitate mass murder of the people deported into such a camp (such as the Nazis Auschwitz and Majdanek, which acquired their murderous functions only some time after they had been... Auschwitz, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, KL Auschwitz is the name used to identify the largest of the Nazi German extermination camps, along with a number of concentration camps, comprising three main camps and 40 to 50 sub-camps. ... It has been suggested that Internment be merged into this article or section. ... Sonderkommandos were work units of Nazi death camp prisoners forced to aid the killing process. ...

The original purpose for the photographs has never been determined. They may have been taken by either Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter, two SS men responsible for fingerprinting and taking photo IDs of those prisoners who were not selected for extermination. SS or ss or Ss may be: The Schutzstaffel, a Nazi paramilitary force Steamship (SS) (ship prefix) The United States Secret Service A submarine not powered by nuclear energy (SS) (United States Navy designator), see SSN A Soviet/Russian surface-to-surface missile, as listed by NATO reporting name Shortstop...

The album has 56 pages and 193 photographs. Originally, it had more photos, but before being donated to the Holocaust Museum in Israel, Yad Vashem, some of them were given to survivors who recognized relatives and friends. Yad Vashem memorial sculpture Yad Vashem (יד ושם) is Israels official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust established in 1953 through the Memorial Law passed by the Knesset, Israels parliament. ...

The images follow the processing of newly arrived Hungarian Jews in the early summer of 1944. They document the disembarkation of the Jewish prisoners from the train boxcars, followed by the selection process, performed by doctors of the SS and wardens of the camp, which separated those who were considered fit for work from those who were to be sent to the gas chambers. The photographer followed groups of those selected for work, and those selected for death to a birch tree grove just outside of the crematoria where they were made to wait before being killed. SS or ss or Ss may be: The Schutzstaffel, a Nazi paramilitary force Steamship (SS) (ship prefix) The United States Secret Service A submarine not powered by nuclear energy (SS) (United States Navy designator), see SSN A Soviet/Russian surface-to-surface missile, as listed by NATO reporting name Shortstop...

The photographer also documented the workings of an area called Canada, where the looted belongings of the prisoners were sorted before transport to Germany.

The album's survival is remarkable, given the strenuous efforts made by the Nazis to keep the Final Solution a secret. Also remarkable is the story of its discovery. Lilly Jacob (later Lilly Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier) was selected for work at Auschwitz-Birkenau while the other members of her family were sent to the gas chambers. The Auschwitz camp was evacuated by the Nazis as the Soviet army approached. Jacob was passed through various camps, finally arriving at the Dora concentration camp, where she was eventually liberated. Recovering from illness in a vacated barracks of the SS, Jacob found the album in a cupboard beside her bed. Inside, she found pictures of her relatives and others from her community. The coincidence was astounding, given that the Nordhausen-Dora camp was over 640 km (400 miles) away, and that over 1,600,000 people were killed at Auschwitz. In a February 26, 1942 letter to German diplomat Martin Luther, Reinhard Heydrich follows up on the Wannsee Conference by asking Luther for administrative assistance in the implementation of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution of the Jewish Question). ... Roland statue in Nordhausen Twinning The city is twinned with Bet Shemesh in Israel Charleville-Mézières in France Bochum Ostrów Wielkopolski in Poland Nordhausen is a city of about 45,000 people at the southern border of the Harz mountains, in the state of Thuringia, Germany. ...