Photos That Helped to Document the Holocaust Were Taken by a Dutch Nazi, NYT

'Photos That Helped to Document the Holocaust Were Taken by a Nazi,' The New York Times, July 29, 2022.

- Historians have relied on Herman Heukels’s pictures of Jewish persecution in World War II, but it’s not widely known that the Dutch photographer shot them as Nazi propaganda. -

AMSTERDAM — On June 20, 1943, bewildered and terrified families, laden with baggage and branded with yellow stars, were forced into Olympiaplein, one of this city’s most recognizable public squares. Few knew where they were going, or for how long, so they wore their winter coats despite the blazing sun as they registered with the Nazi authorities.

A Dutch photographer, Herman Heukels, moved through the crowd, taking pictures of people who would soon be deported to concentration camps. His images would be the final portraits of many of these people, who were among 5,500 sent that day from Amsterdam to Westerbork transit camp, and then on to “the east.” The vast majority would never return.

Heukels’s photos are some of the strongest visual evidence used by historians to illustrate the Holocaust in the Netherlands, which took the lives of more than 102,000 of the estimated 140,000 Jewish civilians who lived in the country before World War II.

Yet despite their ubiquity in books and films, few people outside of scholarly circles know that these images were actually taken by a Dutch Nazi. He intended to depict Jews in a demeaning light. Instead, he ended up paying stark witness to the atrocities of the Third Reich... More + Photos, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/arts/design/holocaust-photos-dutch-nazi.html

- The Evil of Herman Heukels... He was arrested after the war and committed suicide on April 26, 1947, while in prison...https://dirkdeklein.net/2021/09/24/the-evil-of-herman-heukers/