Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish professional photographer and a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. He became known as the “famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp”. ; his life and work were the subjects of the polish television documentary film “The Portraitist” made by Ireneusz Dobrowolski. Brasse’s “Confession” in front of the camera lasted 10 days. Portraitist was born on 3 December 1917 to a descendant of Austrian colonists and a Polish mother in Żywiec, in Partitioned Poland. His father was a Polish soldier in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921. Wilhelm Brasse was “trained as a portrait photographer in a studio owned by his aunt” in Katowice, and “had an eye for the telling image and an ability to put his subjects at ease.” After the September 1939 invasion of Poland, he was pressured by the Nazis to join them, refused, was repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo, and tried to escape to France, but he was captured on the Hungarian border. On 31 August 1940, he was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, soon after it opened. In February 1941, after having been called to the office of Rudolf Hoess, Auschwitz’s commander, along with four others, and tested for “photographic skills”, he was selected specifically for his “laboratory skills” and “technical ability with a camera” and for his ability to speak German, and then ordered to document the Nazi prisoners in the camp in the “Erkennungsdienst, the photographic identification unit.“  A year and a half later, Brasse encountered Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor who “liked” his photographs and wanted him to photograph some of the twins and people with congenital disorders moves to his infirmary on whom Mengele was “experimenting”. During the evacuation of the camp, he ignored the command to burn all the pictures, saving over 40,000. photography. After returning home to Żywiec, a “few miles from” KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, Brasse tried to start “taking pictures again”, but, traumatized, he found himself haunted by the “ghosts” of the “dead” – the subjects of his tens of thousands of Auschwitz pictures – and unable to resume his work as a portrait photographer, he ultimately established what would become a “moderately prosperous” sausage casing business. He died in Żywiec, at the age of 94.

Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish professional photographer and a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. He became known as the “famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp”. ; his life and work were the subjects of the polish television documentary film “The Portraitist” made by Ireneusz Dobrowolski. Brasse’s “Confession” in front of the camera lasted 10 days. Portraitist was born on 3 December 1917 to a descendant of Austrian colonists and a Polish mother in Żywiec, in Partitioned Poland. His father was a Polish soldier in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921. Wilhelm Brasse was “trained as a portrait photographer in a studio owned by his aunt” in Katowice, and “had an eye for the telling image and an ability to put his subjects at ease.” After the September 1939 invasion of Poland, he was pressured by the Nazis to join them, refused, was repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo, and tried to escape to France, but he was captured on the Hungarian border. On 31 August 1940, he was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, soon after it opened. In February 1941, after having been called to the office of Rudolf Hoess, Auschwitz’s commander, along with four others, and tested for “photographic skills”, he was selected specifically for his “laboratory skills” and “technical ability with a camera” and for his ability to speak German, and then ordered to document the Nazi prisoners in the camp in the “Erkennungsdienst, the photographic identification unit.“  A year and a half later, Brasse encountered Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor who “liked” his photographs and wanted him to photograph some of the twins and people with congenital disorders moves to his infirmary on whom Mengele was “experimenting”. During the evacuation of the camp, he ignored the command to burn all the pictures, saving over 40,000. photography. After returning home to Żywiec, a “few miles from” KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, Brasse tried to start “taking pictures again”, but, traumatized, he found himself haunted by the “ghosts” of the “dead” – the subjects of his tens of thousands of Auschwitz pictures – and unable to resume his work as a portrait photographer, he ultimately established what would become a “moderately prosperous” sausage casing business. He died in Żywiec, at the age of 94.

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