Luca Crippa

Maurizio Onnis

Jennifer Higgins

The powerful true story of Wilhelm Brasse prisoner number 3444

When Germany invaded Wilhelm Brasse's native Poland in 1939, he refused  to swear allegiance to The Wehrmacht. He was deported to Auschwitz  concentration camp as political prisoner number 3444. A trained portrait  photographer, he was  ordered by the SS to record the inner workings of  the camp. He began by taking identification photographs of prisoners as  they entered, went on to capture the  criminal medical experiments of  Josef Mengele, and also recorded executions. Between 1940 and 1945,   Brasse took around 50,000 photographs. He took them because he had no   choice. Brasse's conscience wouldn't allow him to hide behind his  camera forever. First he risked his life by joining the  camp's  Resistance movement, faking documents and trying to smuggle images to  the outside world to reveal the horror. Then, as Soviet troops advanced  on the camp  to liberate it, Brasse refused SS orders to destroy his  photographs. 'Because the world must know,' he said. For readers of <i>The Librarian of Auschwitz </i>and <i>The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz</i>, this extraordinary true story of hope and courage lies at the very centre of Holocaust history.

The Auschwitz Photographer

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