Auschwitz Museum Appeals for SS Staff Documents
Image by Getty Images
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — The director of Auschwitz –Birkenau Museum has appealed to Germans and Austrians to donate documents, photographs, personal letters, or any other materials related to the SS staff of the camp.
“Without a comprehensive analysis and understanding of the motivation and mentality of the perpetrators, our efforts to wisely counsel future generations will only remain intuitive. Today, we ask you to help,” reads the appeal.
The Schutzstaffel, or SS, was a major paramilitary organization under German fuhrer Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party.
Last week, the museum published a book containing excerpts of testimonies of SS staff of the camp given during the trial in Krakow in 1947. Accused were 40 SS members of which 23 were sentenced to death. One person was acquitted.
“The archives contain very few private materials created by members of the SS staff,” said Museum Director Piotr Cywinski in a statementt issued Wednesday.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
