Does anyone know the story behind this picture? (Warning: somewhat offensive)

[Holocene]

http://www.pariswerlin.com/images/photos/nigel/holocaust.jpg

...,

 

[binzing]

No...looks WWI or WWII era though...

 

[fourier jr]

is it a couple kissing or a man trying to run away with a pig?

 

[moose]

I thought it was a man holding his daughter

 

[Cyrus]

i looked at the source from your picture and it said holocaust, so I am guessing he shot that woman and child in the back of the head.

Anyways, I also found this gem from your photo link!

http://www.pariswerlin.com/fotopage/vacaville/vaca_intro.html

He has some very good shots. The prison hospice photos are great.

 

[wlgreenfield]

This photo was taken during World War Two. It is allegedly a photo of a German soldier shooting a Jewish woman who was protecting her child, while other soldiers (to the far right, not shown here) were digging the grave. However it has long since been proven a fake. The soldier in question is wearing nearly knee high boots, which German soldiers did not wear (they went mid-calf). He is also wearing wide legged pants, which would not have been worn in the field. The uniform itself is that of a Soviet or Russian soldier. Even if it was a German soldier, he still isn't pointing the gun at the woman, he is actually aiming slightly above her, and into the distance. While the photo itself is real, the story circulating about it being a Nazi and Jew, is incorrect.
Hope I could be of assistance.

 

[rewebster]

It looks fake---the shadowing and lighting on the figures isn't consistent with one another

 

[Danger]

That gun looks more like a garden hose; I've never seen a steel barrel droop like that.
In any event, the elevation appears right for a head-shot, but the guy's stance and eyeline seem to indicate that the weapon is aimed well off to the woman's left.

 

[Borek]

Even if this one is fake, there is abundance of similar pictures which are 100% not fakes.

Interestingly, IIWW pictures show quite often now on eBay and other auction services, after spending 60+ years in german photo albums. Generation that took part in IIWW dies out and their pictures are quite often either being thrown out, or sold.

 

[rewebster]

yeah--its too bad there's another group of present day ones coming out of Iraq and other places around the world---

 

[Borek]

That gun looks more like a garden hose; I've never seen a steel barrel droop like that.

These pictures are quite often scanned and rescanned, published and republished, and final version you see lacks a lot of features that were visible on the original. On other forum (http://www.werttrew.fora.pl - in Polish) we spend considerable aomunt of time trying to identify old pictures taken in Warsaw and this is a very frequent problem.

 

[Borek]

http://www6.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/photo?lang=en

Search for Ivangorod. Not that the presence of the picture there proves anything. My friends told me that the picture was often published and described as taken in eastern Poland, not in Ukraine.

 

[Borek]

More info:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Kiev_Jew_Killings_in_Ivangorod_(1942).jpg

 

[Cyrus]

Why does everyone act as photo expert and claim pictures are fake when people post them lately. Its really getting old.

 

[WarPhalange]

It's photoshopped.

 

[Borek]

For sure it is saved with too high compression, that's why there are compression artefacts visible, I am not able to tell if it is photoshopped or not. According to description it was published many years ago - not later that in 1960 - so Photoshop is out of the question.

Jerzy Tomaszewski is a well known person in the history of Polish IIWW photography, musem of Warsaw Uprising has huge collection of his pictures. I was lucky to visit museum archives and I was able to see some of them - very impressive to say the least.

See an article about Tomaszewski here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2005/jul/28/photography.secondworldwar

Picture in question is claimed to be between those copied at Foto-Rys labs in early forties.

 

[WarPhalange]

No, it's definitely photoshopped. How else would they be on the moon like that?

 

[LowlyPion]

More info:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Kiev_Jew_Killings_in_Ivangorod_(1942).jpg

I notice additional gun barrels to the left of the picture you supplied. I agree that the compression artifacts make it indeterminate to confirm whether it was faked. As we know such acts of inhumanity were all too common.

 

[turbo]

I doubt the authenticity of the photo, or at least the identification of the shooter as German because of the uniform. Lest we forget, the Russian army "foraged" through the Baltic states taking anything they wanted and killing anybody who tried to stop them. A very dear Latvian friend of mine was picked up at school by his mother and aunt and they took off cross-country. It took them a year to make their way across Europe to get to Belgium, where they were given permission to emigrate to the US. According to Kredo, the Russians raided the family farm, stealing stored food and slaughtering their livestock and when his grandfather, uncles, etc tried to stop them, the Russians killed them. When the Nazis pressed toward Russia, lots of men from the Baltic states begged to join them so they could kill Russians. The Germans weren't the only villains in that war - there is plenty of blame to go around.

 

[Borek]

The Germans weren't the only villains in that war - there is plenty of blame to go around.

That's true, but from what I read this picture was between many others copied in Warsaw in Foto-Rys lab. These were pictures taken by german soldiers and either sent to Warsaw to be developed, or developed in Warsaw when soldiers were taking a leave. Foto-Rys lab was organized by Germans (Polish citizens were not allowed to own cameras) to serve both their propaganda and private needs, but it was infiltrated by Polish resistance (Home Army), whose members copied literally hundreds of those pictures. Pictures were sent to London to help British intelligence, it occurred that they also document atrocities. At least some of these pictures survived. And as long as I agree that not every picture showing german war atrocities is genuine, this one seems to be from a reliable source.

At the same time Wikimedia Commons tells slightly different story, that the picture was intercepted at post office. I have never heard about Tomaszewski working at post office, but on several occasions I have read about Foto-Rys lab, so this version sounds much more probable to me.

Also note, that Russian actions were rather not documented. There are much less pictures taken by Russians. Russian soldiers were much poorer and not as well educated as their German opponents. Germans had a lot of private cameras, Russians had not, which can be attributed both to social and cultural differences and to gov policies.

 

[turbo]

At the same time Wikimedia Commons tells slightly different story, that the picture was intercepted at post office. I have never heard about Tomaszewski working at post office, but on several occasions I have read about Foto-Rys lab, so this version sounds much more probable to me.

Also note, that Russian actions were rather not documented. There are much less pictures taken by Russians. Russian soldiers were much poorer and not as well educated as their German opponents. Germans had a lot of private cameras, Russians had not, which can be attributed both to social and cultural differences and to gov policies.

Certainly, I do not dispute the authenticity of many of the photos of atrocities of WWII, and thanks to the Germans' fascination with photography, there are many. The production of cameras designed to use re-spooled 35mm motion picture film meant that cameras got portable pretty quickly. This particular image just seems to have been badly duplicated, and the light is somehow "off". I hadn't heard as much about Tomaszewski until I Googled with his first name Jerzy. A true hero of Poland.

http://www.warsawuprising.com/paper/guardian.htm