A Jewish Photographer Documented Nazi Deportation of Jews
Unique and chilling images of one of the first deportations of German Jews from their homes during World War II have been published for the first time by a Berlin-based international research project.
The set of 13 pictures — discovered by chance in an archive in Dresden by historian Steffen Heidrich — were taken clandestinely. They are believed to be the only ones chronicling a deportation captured by a Jewish photographer.
The photos show hundreds of Jewish men and women — from elderly people in wheelchairs to young children grasping their parents’ hands — being rounded up and herded into a beer garden in Breslau, Silesia, on November 21, 1941.
The photographer is believed to be Albert Hadda (1892-1975). Hadda was married to a non-Jew and therefore escaped deportation for a time. It is thought that he had access to the area of the city where the victims were taken to be deported; a section that was sealed off to the general public. Hadda survived the Groß-Rosen concentration camp, and after living in Israel for a time returned to Germany. He died in Frankfurt am Main in 1975 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Stockholm, where Hadda’s daughter lived.