The Portraitist (Portrecista)

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

In stark contrast to The Book Thief, Wilhelm Brasse's remembers pre-war Germany, where young women wore lockets with photographs around their necks. When opened, the lockets held a pictures of Hitler.

Wilhelm Brasse learned photography in his aunt's successful photo atelier and was a young man working there, when World War II came to him. Brasse joined the Polish army. His company attempted to join general Anders, after Hitler invaded Poland. They were captured in Hungary and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Wilhelm Brasse became prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau in September 1940 and remained prisoner until Auschwitz-Birkenau was freed on January 27. 1945 by the Soviet army. Of the 1,3 million people deported to Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Auschwitz-Monowitz 7,000, mostly ill and dying, were still there, when the Soviets arrived; 1,1 million were dead.

Brasse worked as the camp’s photographer. He estimates that he had taken between 40,000 and 50,000 photographs, among them Nazi's work ID photographs, portraits they sent to their families and pictures documenting unbelievable cruelty, including Mengele's crimes. Part of Brasse's duties was to take prisoner’s file photographs for the camp's archive.

The book, and the film named Portrecista, are based on a long interview with Wilhelm Brasse, who despite repeated warnings that his „future is black”, survived. Brasse remembers prisoners, as well as the commandants and guards.

Among the people brought to him to have their pictures taken, he remembers a young Hungarian doctor, somebody recognized her among the prisoners on the train ramp, and asked Brasse to pretend that her picture did not come out, because then she would have to come back for another- and live until then. Brasse destroyed the day's negatives, said that the film material was faulty, and asked that the prisoners are scheduled for another session. They were already gassed.

Groups of young girls were brought in from Mengele’s block, terrified and ashamed to stand there naked while being photographed. Brasse describes painfully this despicable cruelty, forcing people to submit to demeaning acts, painful to all victims, he describes how he carefully tried to reassure the girls that nothing will happen to them in the atelier, how he never touched them or came close to them, hopimg not to scare them, how he and his assistant passed them pieces of bread- all the time knowing that once Mengele was done with them, they will be killed. Women were brought to the atelier, injected with anesthesia, their wombs pulled out and photographed to mark progress of diseases that were injected into them.

Brasse remembers his colleague on the crematorium commando, who was forced to cut skin off the dead. Brasse had photographed the victims shortly before, because they had interesting tattoos, and the commando was ordered to preserve the tattooed skin of the murdered for Mengele.

A 23 years old, blond, pretty SS woman came to have her portrait taken. She wanted her breasts to show in the picture, which both surprised and exited young Brasse. The woman poisoned herself, after she collected her pictures. She worked as a telephone operator behind the camp fence and had clear view of what what was going on inside.

Brasse recognized two of the Jewish prisoners, sent to be photographed. It is a memory that never left him; he gave the men some food and cigarettes, and asked the brutal guard Szymborski to kill them, when it came to that, fast and with no pain. Brasse knew they would not live. He also knew that prisoners were often tortured to death and wanted to spare the men the last horror. Decades later, Brasse still could not comprehend terror of such magnitude that it forces anyone to beg for easy death, beg for it as act of mercy, for people he knows.

He had taken a wedding picture of a Spanish woman and a prisoner with their child, born while the newlyweds were separated. He remembers that the camp bordello was closed for the night, so that the family might spend the night together. In the morning the wife and child left Auschwitz. Few weeks later the husband was hanged, having been caught when he tried to escape.

Interestingly, Brasse remembers a whole array of people: Germans, Russians, Poles, Hungarians and Jews coming through his atelier. He also remembers that guards' personal hatred varied, they tortured people not only on order, but freely when they wanted, because they hated Russians*, for example.

At the end, we find out that when Brasse’s company was captured, he and one other soldier, Mr. Adler, both ethnic Germans, were given a choice: go to Auschwitz- Birkenau or join the German army. Both decided not to join the Germans. A month later, Adler was dead.

I listened to the quiet, noninflected voice and it took me a long time to comprehend what was it hiding: this man repeatedly risked his life to pass food to prisoners, to get them a short stave of death, to attempt to lessen their suffering, if he could not prevent their death. He kept his co-workers fed and alive by negotiating with Nazis, who could have kill him at will, and expected to do so at the end. Through all that, Brasse preserved his human revulsion for those who torture and demean others. He never excused either.

Brasse’s unpretentious humanity shows in his pictures. Photographing the living skeletons of imprisoned girls, he manages to capture their souls in their eyes. He took a haunting picture of a young Jewish girl, of men and women, who passed through, and each is a living individual in Brasse’s photographs.

Often, when we talk about concentration camps, the talk centers on the killers. The murderers, and their deeds, take over and the victims become a faceless mass of the dead. Brasse makes them living, suffering humans. It is unique, and needed. Holocaust will only be prevented, if the victims are screaming about how they were sacrificed to greed and hatred.

Brasse, and his commando, survived on food Brasse traded for the guards' portraits. They risked their lives to save the photographic archive hoping to document what was happening in Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the war, Brasse was not able return to photography. Any time he worked on a portrait, the faces of the dead came to haunt him.

Director: Ireneusz Dobrowolski
Writer: Ireneusz Dobrowolski
Star: Wilhelm Brasse
Music: Agata Steczkowska
Cinematography: Jacek Taszakowski



*Not a single Soviet POW survived.