Wilhelm Brasse (1917–2012)

Wilhelm Brasse was born to an Austrian-Polish family in Żywiec, Poland. His aunt was a photographer with a studio in Katowice and he studied with her in the 1930s and became a portrait photographer. After the Nazis invaded his country at the start of World War II, he was interrogated by the Gestapo and pressured to join the German Army, but refused. He was imprisoned for three months and after his release, tried to escape Poland but was captured at the border. He was deported in August 1940 to the newly-opened Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, where his arm was tattooed with prisoner number 3444. He was selected for his photography skills and ability to speak German and given a choice: death, or working in the Erkennungsdienst (Police Records Department), documenting the prisoners in the camp. Eventually his assignment included taking photos of prisoners in so-called medical experiments by Josef Mengele, the notorious camp doctor. Near the end of the war, as the Red Army approached in January-February 1945, Brasse was ordered to destroy the photos. However, he and Bronisław Jureczek, another photographer, were able to save about 40,000 photos for history. Along with thousands of other Auschwitz prisoners, Brasse was sent on a death march to the concentration camp in Ebensee, a subcamp of Mauthausen. He remained imprisoned there until being liberated by American troops in May 1945. Brasse gave the photos to the Polish Red Cross and returned home to Żywiec. There he tried to resume his career but found himself haunted by his experiences at Auschwitz, and abandoned photography. He opened a business making sausage casings. With Maria Anna Potocka, in 2012 he published a memoir entitled Wilhelm Brasse, Number 3444: Photographer Auschwitz 1940-1945. He also was featured in the 2010 Polish documentary film Portrecista (The Portraitist).