"The executions must ..."

The Ger­man war of anni­hi­la­tion in World War II also degrad­ed Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war. ​“The peo­ple have to sleep on the floor with­out blan­kets, just as they arrived.” They were delib­er­ate­ly mur­dered, and many of them starved to death in the camps. The SS took pho­tographs of these pris­on­ers of war for pro­pa­gan­da pur­pos­es. Six­ty-nine of them were secured by sur­viv­ing pris­on­ers.
How do these tes­ti­monies of hor­ror demon­strate? chezweitz, togeth­er with the cura­tors of the Sach­sen­hausen Memo­r­i­al, decid­ed to print these oppres­sive images of unfath­omable bru­tal­i­ty on large gauze pan­els. In this way, vis­i­tors to the exhi­bi­tion ​“encounter” the pris­on­ers of war at eye lev­el. The scenog­ra­phy is intend­ed to counter the dehu­man­iz­ing gaze of the moment with the dig­ni­ty of the new situation.