Hasta La Ideas

(Photos: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

What do you get when you combine America’s History Channel-stoked fascination with all things World War II (admit it, you’re not immune to the charms of grainy Hitler footage) with the burgeoning national pastime known as “scrapbooking”? Nazi Scrapbooks from Hell, a special that airs tomorrow night on the National Geographic channel. They had us at Nazi Scrapbooks. Sandwiched between episodes of The Dog Whisperer, the hour-long special provides a look into the photo album of SS officer Karl Höecker, the adjutant to the commandant at Auschwitz. Taken between May and December 1944, the chilling photos capture quotidian life at the concentration camp for Nazi officers and staff: relaxing on the terrace, eating blueberries, stopped mid-singalong by a sudden downpour. In its monstrous ordinariness, Höecker’s scrapbook reveals the snapshot as an ideal medium for capturing the banality of evil.

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