Excerpt of an interview with Hermann Lewinter, photographer of the Janowska concentration camp.

HL: My wife and Regina (Goldstein) were all hidden with me during the war. We were all hidden by a Gentile. I was also in the Janowska Road Camp. I came from Zloczow. In my hometown we established a Sholom Ansky Cultural Club. I was born in 1907. I was nine when my father died. I was a in the camps. The Nazis ordered me to go around the camp and snap anything what I see.

WH: So what pictures did you snap, mostly?

HL: Mostly aktzions. One time Hitler visited the camp. People were hanging on trees, from poles. But this I didn’t snap for the Nazis. They would kill you if they found out. I hid it. You had to be very careful. You see, I was the last photographer in this camp. I snapped pictures so there should be a memory of what happened.

WH: If you were afraid they would kill you if they caught you taking the pictures, why did you do it?

HL: Because I saw the people with their hands and legs tied to the poles and killed them and every day the truck took them away like a piece of garbage. I felt if I would survive it would be a good testimony. We had pictures of Polish prostitutes who lived with the Nazis. Altogether I had maybe 530 pictures. They were sent to Nuremberg for the trials. Later the Germans sent a team to talk to me and I gave them pictures of the Gestapo. Although they called me to be a witness, I never went. So we met in New York at the consulate. My friend told me not to go to Germany. He said, “They making fun of you; they don’t believe you what you say, even with the pictures. They confusing you, you getting meshuga (crazy). This was in the late fifties. I also sent to Wiesenthal a batch of pictures. When I escaped from the camp I took the pictures with me.

WH: Do you have the pictures here? Can I see them?

HL: Yes, but not all. Here are some of the mass graves which we opened. The doctors checked them to see how old they were. (He spreads out the pictures and shows them to me.) Here’s a picture of partisans hanging. Here’s the last Jewish band playing at a selection. Here’s the machine they used to crush the bones. Here are some of the officers on horses. Here are the barracks. Here’s the dog grabbing people by the throat.

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