Pictures of Atrocity: Public Discussion of Der gelbe Stern in Early 1960s West Germany

This article discusses Der gelbe Stern by Gerhard Schoenberner,a book of Holocaust photodocumentation appearing in West Germanyin 1960, and analyses its reception in the contemporary WestGerman press. Both the work and its public discussion are placedin context of Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit (‘comingto terms with the past’) and of what historian Habbo Knochhas termed ‘the return of the pictures’, in otherwords, atrocity pictures of the kind that the Allies forcedGermans to see right after the war, that Germans tended to shunthereafter, but that came back into public view in the late1950s. The reception of Schoenberner's book included reviewsfrom a wide range of West German newspapers and magazines. Thesereviews were overwhelmingly favourable and in considerable agreementon the book's importance. There was consensus that its pictureswould stir viewers emotionally and lead them to ‘the truth’about the Third Reich and its crime against the Jews. In addition,there were moral, historical and political reflections, includinga discussion of German ‘guilt’ concerned not onlywith specific crimes but with the general acquiescence of Germansociety in persecution of Jews in the 1930s. There was alsoappreciation of the role of pictures in conveying historicalunderstanding and, it was hoped, in educating West German youth.In addition, some reviewers considered Der gelbe Stern to bea prod to greater public discussion and thus to an enlargementof democratic culture. There was a marked reticence in the reviewsto indicate that awareness generated by this book would contributeto public outcry against the employment of men with a Nazi pastas high officials of the Federal Republic, or to defend Schoenberneragainst the charge that was sure to come from the Right: sincesome of his photos were from Communist Eastern Europe they wereof dubious origin and no doubt part of a plot to distract theWest from the fight against Communism. It is suggested thatsilence on either issue would have had the effect of keepingreaders focused on the pictures and their moral, historicaland democratic implications.