Auschwitz Prisoner Photos, 1941-1942

This database contains information on 2,530 Jews who were photographed upon entry to Auschwitz.

Background

In 1941 and 1942, prisoners (Jews and non-Jews) "admitted" into the Auschwitz concentration camp were photographed.  Each photograph included three views (straight on, right and left), with the person's camp number, the type of prisoner, e.g.: Jew, Political Prisoner, or Roma/Sinti, but not the name of the prisoner.  No pictures were taken of persons sent directly to the gas chambers.  By 1943, due to a shortage of photographic paper and the increasing number of arriving prisoners, photo procedures were used only rarely.

While the number of such photographss must have been much larger, only slightly more than 30,000 of these photos remain, which are held at the Auschwitz Museum in Poland.  Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive public list of the holdings of these photos, but some have been shared with International Tracing Service (ITS) in Germany, Yad Vashem in Israel, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington.  In addition, the Auschwitz Museum permitted Giuseppe Zambon to publish over 600 photos in his book, Auschwitz: Abels Gesichter (Frankfurt am Main: Zambon, 1995). 189 pages. OCLC #34799623.

Identifying the individuals portrayed and compiling a database is a tedious job, and it is sometimes impossible to determine a prisoner's name from the camp number.  Virtually all of the names included also appear in the International Tracing Service's "Central Names Index" (CNI), but only in a few cases does the CNI indicate that photographs were made.  While the International Tracing Service has a partial index to these numbers, it is far from complete, and the information in each case is often fragmentary.  Moreover, prisoner numbers were sometimes reused, making a definitive determination of the identity of the person shown difficult.  Luckily though, where a number appears twice, they often refer to one man and one woman.  The photos clearly indicate whether a subject was male or female, by the nature of their headgear — caps for men, and scarves for women.  Even where no name or more than one name could be linked to a specific prisoner name, the number has been included here, in the slight hope that researchers may know of a number.

In preparing this database every effort has been made to accurately link prisoner numbers with the persons to whom they refer.  However, while the information provided on each person is accurate — taken from International Tracing Service and other files — we want to stress that there is no guarantee that the linkage to the photo(s) is accurate in every case.

This database of 2,530 names includes all persons identified in Auschwitz: Abels Gesichter, and a partial list drawing on the holdings of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)'s Photo Archives.  While most of these persons perished in Auschwitz, the fate of some could not be determined, and there were a number of persons transferred from Auschwitz to other camps near the end of the war, some of whom survived.  Now that all the photos in the above sources have been included, it is hoped that the project can be extended to the photos held by ITS.

The amount of information available on each person varies, from little more than a name, to date and place of birth, profession and date of death.  In many cases, while not in the database, International Tracing Service files include death certificates and information on former residences and family members.  In general, when you see occupation information, this usually means that further documents such as death certificates are available.

Where no name appears, this means that while the USHMM has a photo of that individual, it has proved impossible to identify the person.  The listing has been retained in the hope that the number may be recognized by someone, or that at some time in the future additional information may become available.

Requests for copies of photographs held at the USHMM (i.e., those where a "USHMM Reference Number" appears) should be sent to PhotoArchives@ushmm.org.  Your message should include the statement that this photo will not be used for commercial purposes.  Please do NOT ask for large numbers of photos, e.g. all persons born in Krakau — or for all persons named Cohen (especially because, amazingly enough, there are no Cohens in this database).  Since this work is time consuming, and the USHMM staff who will be responding has limited time, we ask for your cooperation.  For those pictures which appear in Auschwitz: Abels Gesichter, you will need to locate a copy of the book.  A list of libraries which hold the book can be found on the OCLC website.

Database

This database contains 2,530 records of indexed photographs.  The fields for this database are as follows:

• Name (Surname + Given name)
• Date of Birth
• Place of Birth
• Nationality (Jews were listed without nationality, but rather simply as "Jude")
• Profession (in German)
  For English-language translations, see the JewishGen InfoFile "German Occupation Definitions - English Translations".
• Date of Entry to Auschwitz
• Date of Death
• Prisoner Number
• Comments
• USHMM Reference Number
  (When you do not see a number in this column, it means that the photograph came from the book Auschwitz: Abels Gesichter).

Acknowledgments

The information contained in this database was indexed from the photos in Giuseppe Zambon's book Auschwitz: Abels Gesichter, and photos in the USHMM's photo archives.  Peter Landé and Kathryn Cornelius compiled the list.

In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible.  Special thanks to Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy.  Particular thanks to Nolan Altman, Vice President of Data Acquisition and Coordinator of JewishGen's Holocaust Database files.

Nolan Altman
January 2012

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database.