Wednesday, May 20, 2015

May 20th Mini Task


        The Museum Karlshorst shows several photos of Nazi war crimes. It often remains out of the mind of the viewer, but every photo has a photographer. In the case of the photos of the war crimes, Nazi soldiers were the photographers. The fact that they took those photos shows their mentality; they did not try to hide their crimes, they were not ashamed, but they documented them. This also provides insight into why they were so afraid to lose the war being that they fear similar cruel treatment. I was impressed by the way the Museum Karlshorst considered the photographers and thus chose to post a photo of a camera from WW2 to represent this.  

Camera from WW2. This was actually a Soviet camera. They had a different attitude from the Nazis towards taking photos during the war.

4 comments:

Amanda.Filipchuk said...

I like that you chose this aspect of the museum because of the photography aspect. I agree that we often forget that there is usually a person behind the camera. I have seen pictures that were taken by nazi photographers and presented as gifts for other nazi members of war crimes being commited. It is crazy to think that is was a suitable present in today's context.

Anonymous said...

I agree this was a great choice! You never really think of photos in the context of being taken, like he said it's more about the moment being captured. It really is sad to me that people were so comfortable with their actions that they took 'trophies' of them. I also thought it was interesting that the Red Army did not allow its members to take photos, why do you think that is? Especially since they documented the war anyways?

Taya said...

@ Jennifer. Yeah, I agree it is really sad. It makes sense to me that an army wouldn't take photos of themselves in horrific acts of war. That they would not want to be seen as the bad guys. So the fact that the Red Army was not suppose to take pictures seems almost logical. I'm still just trying to wrap my head around why the other side didn't see an issue with this. Crazy ideology I suppose.

Anonymous said...


True. I am not sure I will ever wrap my head around it. I wonder if any of the other armies had similar policies. For example Canada. I have never really thought about it before I guess.