The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau

After reading this book, I feel this should be in every house in every country. You hear so much about the people and the numbers killed that sometimes it doesn't seem real but this book makes it very real. The pictures are so powerful and at the same time so ordinary - they could be pictures of anyone's parents or grandparents. The most haunting pictures are those of the children - you have to wonder how many survived. The stories of the survivors bring it all home - "There's the aunt of the little girl I used to babysit", etc. I found it amazing that these pictures did survive 40, 50 years before being discovered again. Anyone who denies the Holocaust happened should read this book and then try to still say it never happened. Thank you Ann Weiss for bringing these pictures and the stores behind them out of the darkness.

"The last Album" by Ann Weiss is well organized and well written. It contains 400 remarkable photographs that were brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau by victims in 1943. These photographs were taken prior to the Holocaust and depict people bursting with life. This is an extremely unique book, and contains material that was lovingly researched for a period of 15 years. The beauty of this book is that the photographs and the research accomplished brings to life people that were lost during the dreadful time of the Holocaust. The book like the author is soft, sweet, articulate and brilliant

This book is an amazing piece of history. The fact that so many photos brought into Auschwitz have survived is phenomenol as all personal effects were automotically burned by the Nazis murderers. When viewing the photos in this book, which were brought in by those of the Sosnowiec-Bendzin transport, it would also be advisable to read Tadeusz Borokowski's book "This way to the gas ladies & gentleman' as this book covers the particular Sosnowiec-Bendzin transport and outlines in gruesome and terrifying detail what became of many of those on this transport. The photographs bring back to life many who are gone and also tells you those who survived, which is a relief to realise that some of those from the Polish ghettos made it. These photos bring back a lost world that will never return and along with Roman Vishniac's collection of photographs are a piece of history that is very much worth investing in.

Ann Weiss shared her pictures with me years before this important booked was published. Ask someone what they would grab if their house were burning, and upon reflection many or most would say "the family pictures." And thus it was with the Jews. As they hurriedly stuffed what they could and would preserve into a rucksack or suitcase as they were driven out of their homes and onto the cattle cars, the doomed, terrorized Jews took with them family snapshots and albums. After their blood and ashes had long been absorbed by the soil of Auschwitz, Ann Weiss discovered heaps of these photos in a dark and dusty warehouse there. Between the red tape, the logistics and lack of funding, I believe it took her years to copy these images; all that was left of ordinary and moms and dads....and sweet, sweet children. If the number 6,000,000 is too impossible to comprehend, the innocence of young bright eyes recorded in happier times puts it somewhat in perspective

What comes across most powerfully in The Last Album is that in the vast majority of these images there is nothing outwardly "Jewish" about most of the subjects. Nothing to help us understand why the Nazi's marked them. They are middle class, working class, and wealthy, and they look just like their neighbors (and most probably behaved like them, too). It was just this faith, no matter how they practiced it, or didn't. Just an accident of birth for some. I guess the point is that under other circumstances it could have been the Catholics, or Muslims (see Yugoslavia), or Albanians or Kurds. Hopefully this wonderful addition to the literature will serve as yet another reminder how easy it is for us to fall into these groundless hatreds and somehow help hold back our urges to engage in such destructive behavior.