In the camps

by Hartmann, Erich

Through good fortune, Erich Hartmann and his family were able to escape Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and emigrate to America. But over the years he was haunted by the memory of what happened in the camps to his fellow Jews and other victims of the Nazis. In this stark and compelling photographic book, Hartmann has captured the Nazi concentration camps as they exist today - quiet, empty, and crumbling. He has preserved them in images before the camps, twenty-two in all, disintegrate completely, soon to be transformed into museums and memorials - sanitized and less palpable reminders. Devoid of life and human form, the walls and landscapes of the camps speak loudly of the death and horror that once existed there. Hartmann's photographs have the intensity of poetry, creating a deeply moving remembrance of the camps, and a powerful reminder of the evils of intolerance, racism, prejudice, and the horrors of ethnic cleansing that still remain pervasive today.