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Wilhelm Brasse (3 December 1917 – 23 October 2012) 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 subject of the 2005 Polish television documentary film ''The Portraitist'' (''Portrecista''), which first aired in the "Proud to Present" series on the Polish TVP1 on 1 January 2006.〔 Brasse was of mixed Austrian-Polish descent. He learned photography in Katowice at the atelier of his own aunt.〔 After the 1939 German invasion of Poland and occupation of Brasse's hometown Żywiec, in southern Poland, he was interrogated by the Schutzstaffel (SS). He refused to swear allegiance to Hitler, and was imprisoned for three months. After his release, still refusing to capitulate to the Volksliste and forced membership of German Army, he tried to escape to Hungary and join the Polish Army in France but was captured, along with other young men, at the Polish–Hungarian border and deported to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau as prisoner number 3444.〔 〕 Trained before the beginning of World War II as a portrait photographer in Silesia,〔 he was ordered by the SS camp administrators to photograph "prisoners' work, criminal medical experiments, () portraits of the prisoners for the files." Brasse has estimated that he took 40,000 to 50,000 "identity pictures" from 1940 until 1945, before being moved to another concentration camp in Austria, where he was liberated by the American forces in May 1945.〔〔〔 While many of Brasse's photographs did not survive, some are on display in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.〔 His photographs inspired ''Painting Czesława Kwoka'' (2007), which won a literary award.〔 〕 ==Personal history== Wilhelm Brasse was born on 3 December 1917 to a descendant of Austrian colonists and a Polish mother in Żywiec, in the 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 via Hungary, but he was captured at the Polish-Hungarian border and incarcerated for four months.〔 After continuing to refuse to "declare his loyalty to Hitler", 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 Höß, 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 moved to his infirmary on whom Mengele was "experimenting".〔 After the Soviets entered Poland, during the Vistula-Oder Offensive, from 12 January to 2 February 1945, along with thousands of other Auschwitz prisoners, Brasse was forcibly moved to Austria, to the concentration camp in Ebensee, a subcamp of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex (the last remaining in the area still controlled by the Nazis), where he remained imprisoned until the American forces liberated him in early May 1945.〔 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 hundreds 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.〔 Although he had gone back to the State Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau, "to talk with visitors about his experiences", and although he still possessed a "small pre-war Kodak" camera,〔 he would "never take another photograph."〔 He died in Żywiec, at the age of 94. He was married with two children and five grandchildren, and lived with his wife until his death.〔 His death was announced by an Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum historian. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wilhelm Brasse」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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