Posted on December 19, 2012 at 11:34 am

Discovered! Iconic photo in Buchenwald is dishonest photo-fakery

By Carolyn Yeager
copyright 2012 carolyn yeager

This is the photograph that Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight David Eisenhower ordered, in April 1945, to be posted in every German town and city 1 to show the defeated population the “true meaning of Nazism.”

Was this photo made to order according to Ike’s specifications?

A huge blown-up version then went on tour in the United States for the same purpose, to impress on the American people what evil they had gone to war against; why the sacrifice of blood and treasure was justified! Left: “A traveling exhibit of larger than life size photographs was first shown in St. Louis, MO in summer 1945 and then taken to Washington, DC.

It was plastered on the front pages of newspapers across the country. Thus it became one of the most iconic images representing WWII and of what later came to be known as “The Holocaust.” The intention was to portray the war as a noble effort to “save the Jews from enslavement and extermination,” just as the equally bloody American Civil War had come to be taught as a war “to free the slaves,” i.e. the Negroes who were not citizens of the country they were living  in.

Both are black propaganda campaigns that still use whatever is at hand, whether it be subterfuge or not.

In the case of the above photograph, we have learned that the standing figure, the part that makes the biggest, most memorable impact on the viewer, was added later – it was not in the original photo allegedly taken by Private H. Miller of the Civil Affairs Branch of the U.S. Army Signal Corps on April 16, 1945, five days after the “liberation” of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp by American forces.

A blogger, the owner of the Winston Smith Ministry of Truth website who goes by the nickname Black Rabbit,  decided a week or so ago, out of curiosity, to order the New York Times newspaper article from May 6, 1945 in which this photo was published, and when it came the photo looked like this:

Here is  page 2 and 3 of the New York Times article (click to show entire page):

What a shock to see only an empty dark space, and in the New York Times no less!

What happened to the standing man? I was the first to bring it to the attention of the participants in the comment section of furtherglory’s Scrapbookpages Blog after Black Rabbit posted a link to the original article there, and then we quickly began noticing the tell-tale signs of FORGERY about this strange figure who had always appeared odd to me  standing there naked as he is, but did not arouse enough suspicion amidst all of the onslaught of “holocaust” imagery, stories and news articles with which we are constantly being bombarded. We see what we are supposed to see, what we’re told we’re seeing, and almost always leave it at that.  It is also one of the better photo-forgery jobs of Allied holocaust black propaganda – could that be because it was being done at the behest of the Supreme Commander himself?

But let me point out some problems with this figure:

  1. His position in relation to the post is an impossible one (see top photo; click once on image and then again for full enlargement). He is not leaning against the post, but neither is he standing in front of the post.  His feet are in line with the base of the post, but his left shoulder and arm are in front of the post – without any shadow of any kind. There is something ghostly about this figure, as though he’s an apparition.
  2. The edge of his left arm is fuzzy, as if it is drawn or painted where it meets the post (detail right).  The rest of the outline of his shoulders and arms is very sharp, as though cut with scissors.  [In most large-scale reproductions of this photo we have seen (as shown on the Winston Smith Blog), the left edge of the arm is cropped because the larger the image the more noticeable it is.
  3. Notice the blinding whiteness of his torso, and how different it is from his face, hands and legs which are darker (top photo again). The more one studies the torso and arms, the more they look like a drawing rather than a photograph. Notice how faint are the nipples and definition on his chest compared to the man in the lower bunk who is pushing himself forward the better to be seen.
  4. Notice the relaxed, almost dreamy expression on the face of the standing man (detail below):  his lips are parted in a smile; his eyes are looking off into the distance, not at the photographer. He appears in an untroubled  state of mind, unsuited to the environment he’s in and unlike the other men .
  5. 5.  A light source seems to be coming from above right as we face the photo, but the shadows on the legs and feet suggest a light source directly from above. Also, the angle of the shadows on the floor made by the post and by the right leg of the standing figure are not aligned. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6.  Ask yourself why he would be standing there completely nude, with that unlikely expression on his face, five days after the liberation? Also ask yourself why these men would still be lying in these bunks fully dressed, though some having taken their shirts off for effect, five days after the liberation? The only answer is that it’s a staged, arranged photo-shoot for propaganda purposes, not an impromptu entry by a photographer right at the time of liberation – as we are led to believe (because we are supposed to believe it) by the captions that accompany the photo. For example, in the Moberly (Missouri) Monitor-Index on April 30, 1945, the caption to this photo reads: “Slave laborers in their crowded rough bunks in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Jena, Germany, as they were found when U.S. troops of the 80th Division entered the camp.”

 Fakery such as this is common in war propaganda; it just usually doesn’t last so long

We not only have the NYT newspaper article showing the photograph without the standing man, but we can also point out tell-tale signs that this figure was added to the photo … and that it was itself doctored to show a very skinny torso of a “starving” man. What deceit! If Eisenhower propaganda specialists had really found such scenes, they would not have had to invent them!

And yes, I’m asking how many personnel were aware, had to be aware, of this type of forgery. And some still living who are still perfectly aware that “The Holocaust” was and is a post-war intelligence operation with no holds barred. For example, so many of the photos that are archived and sold to the gullible public by the propaganda mill that goes by the name of  the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (using your tax dollars) are wildly mislabeled. The USHMM identifies this very photograph as follows:

Former prisoners of the “little camp” in Buchenwald stare out from the wooden bunks in which they slept three to a “bed.” [Photograph #74607]

Elie Wiesel is pictured in the second row of bunks, seventh from the left, next to the vertical beam.

The man in the bottom left hand corner has been identified as Michael Nikolas Gruner, originally from Hungary, Gershon Blonder Kleinman or Yosef Reich. Isaac Reich is in the bottom row, second from the right and Max Hamburger is on the bottom row, fourth from the left. Perry Shulman from Klimitov, Poland is on the top bunk, second from the left (looking up). The man in the second row, third from left has been identified as Dawid Najman. The man in the second row, fourth from the left has been identified as Abraham Hipler; Berek Rosencajg from Lodz or Zoltan Gergely from Cluj. The man on the third bunk from the bottom, third from the left, has been identified as Ignacz (Isaac) Berkovicz, Abraham Baruch and Paul Argiewicz . Juraj (now Naftali) Furst is pictured in the third bunk, fifth from the left. Standing on the right is Chaim David Halberstam.

Others say the standing man is Simon Toncman, who after the ‘Liberation’ returned to his home country The Netherlands, started a family and became a successful businessman. He refused to talk about this photo until the day he died. 2 (Why would that be? Because he knew it was a fake! And because he had been told to keep quiet about it. That’s the best,  and only reasonable explanation.)

Of the identified men, one is definitely mis-identified! — and that is Paul Argiewicz. The real Paul Argiewicz was discovered by furtherglory;  I picked up his work here (scrowl down to the German drivers license).  How could the “Jewish Organizations” with access to Bad Arolson get that so wrong? They all do it all the time. For example, the ‘meantime -Allen Hall”  article says that “Red Cross records show Heiman Leefsma survived Barrack 56 as a 20-year-old.” Yet when we see who he is identified as in the Flicker picture, he has a balding head and looks like the oldest man there.

And then there is Elie Wiesel! Please see especially here for proof that the man in the bunk is NOT Elie Wiesel. So that is more fakery surrounding this photo, but in this case the person was really in the original photograph, but is an unknown person. The decision to call that man  Elie Wiesel was only made around 1983, with a Nobel Prize in mind.

Both the USHMM and the Allan Hall article are full of errors. There is no need for holocaust “historians,”  filmmakers, or “researchers” to be concerned about accuracy — it doesn’t matter how iconic or world-famous they are. Sloppiness goes unpunished, especially since so much of it is on purpose — to deceive and keep the myth going.  I will be posting about some other fraudulent pictures from Buchenwald in the future.

 

End Notes:

1. “US army commander General Dwight Eisenhower ordered this picture to be posted in every German town and city to show the defeated population the true meaning of Nazism,” writes Allan Hall.   http://www.meantime.com.au/mean-time-articles/2008/8/12/60-years-on-the-faces-of-nazi-shame-get-their-names-back/

2.  Same source (meantime.com):  Quote – “Now, 63 years after they were liberated, they have been united again in print by a German newspaper granted rare access to the files of the Red Cross Tracing Service at Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Using the original German SS registration cards and the camp’s “Todesbuch” – book of death – researchers were able to match up names with Jewish organisations around the globe.

Paul Argiewicz, 82, is now living in the US. He lost his parents in the gas chambers and is a regular on American TV shows talking about his experiences.

Red Cross records show Heiman Leefsma survived Barrack 56 as a 20-year-old. A Dutch national, he vanished shortly after liberation and inmate 130305 has not been heard from since.

Nikolas Gruener, now 80, is a Hungarian Jew who was suffering from TB at the time of liberation. “We warmed ourselves on the bodies of the dead before they cooled down,” he said. A successful businessman after the war, he took part in a number of interviews recently for director Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust archive. He lost his parents and two brothers in the camps.

Max Hamburger is now 88. He was active in the resistance in Amsterdam. He survived the death factory of Auschwitz because he was employed as a medic and went on to Buchenwald, where he weighed just 19 kilograms at liberation. After the war he settled in Belgium,where he became a psychiatrist. He speaks regularly to universities about the Holocaust and his experiences.

Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel is one of the most well-known Holocaust survivors. Wiesel, who coined the phrase “never again”, is now 79. He was awarded the peace prize in 1986. “That is me,” he said, when shown the photo in the 1960s.

Simon Toncman, a Dutch Jew, was 28 at the time of liberation. He married a survivor from Auschwitz and went on to have a successful career in accountancy in his homeland before dying from a genetic bowel complaint in 1975. He never spoke about his Holocaust experiences but revelled in his “wonderful family life”. He had nine grandchildren before his death.

Mel Mermelstein, 81,  is a Hungarian Jew whose whole family perished in Auschwitz. He was portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in a 1991 movie called Never Forget, about his lawsuit against Holocaust deniers in America who suggested the gas chambers were a myth. His autobiography is called By Bread Alone and he too speaks regularly about his time in the camps. Of the photo, he said: “We were alumni of some of the most terrible places on earth. This picture and the men in it mean more to me than I can say.”

 

26 Comments to Discovered! Iconic photo in Buchenwald is dishonest photo-fakery

  1. by John Friend

    On December 20, 2012 at 12:38 am

    Great job Carolyn, thanks for exposing this fraud!

     

  2. by Fallout Shelter 7

    On December 20, 2012 at 7:52 am

    Excellent work Carolyn.I post it on my blog with a link to your site.

     

  3. by Paul Borresen

    On December 20, 2012 at 9:16 am

    Very good article. Does anyone else notice that the man on the second bunk closest to us looks a carbon copy of the man in the bottom middle bunk? Also the whole photograph looks as if there has been a little modern day ‘extras’ work i.e making two or three people appear like many more. The whole photo, not just the man standing up, looks very fake. Either way you have got a slam dunk here because the NYT has proven your case. Well researched and a great article! Happy New Year to you!

     

  4. by Carolyn

    On December 21, 2012 at 3:21 am

    Does anyone else notice that the man on the second bunk closest to us looks a carbon copy of the man in the bottom middle bunk?

    You are right! By God, you’ve found something, Paul, that makes the forgery of this photo indisputable to even the most confirmed holocaust believer. (If they were honest, that is.) Because of the high resolution and size of this photograph, we can clearly see that the 3rd man from the left in the second row, with his head on his bowl, has been reduced in size and pasted into the bottom row, fourth from the left. His eyes have been changed just a little, but that is all. Since the food bowl was removed, they had to paint an ear on him and really botched the job. Also botched was his neck (if you can even call it a neck) — there is not enough shadow under his chin … and what is that nipple-looking spot right where his shoulder should be?

    Thank you! I’m going to write a follow-up post on this and a few other things rather than add it to the current article. Keep studying this photographic document, we might still see more fakery. The next face, the fifth man on the bottom peeking out, is probably also a drawing. This is so obviously a posed shot with a mixed group of cooperative “liberated” inmates, i.e. these men were not bunkmates.

    PS. At Scrapbookpages Blog one of the men in the featured photo http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/holocaust-survivor-has-identified-himself-in-a-famous-photo-taken-by-margaret-bourke-white/, who is still alive, says he did not know any of the other men he was standing there with, yet it looks like some kind of a gang of comrades. This photo was “organized” and taken by Margaret Bourke-White who was as complicit as can be in creating post-war propaganda which turned into “The Holocaust.”

     

  5. by goyishe kup

    On December 20, 2012 at 11:36 am

    The one thing that i remember the most clearly over the past 40 years of my school days at Brandeis University in 1970’s are my student adviser’s words that when he was growing up that his grand parents and parents used the term “‘goyishe kup,’” meaning that the “Non-Jews are Stupid”

    Later in life I learned that the exact translation of “GOYISHE KUP” means that the “Cattle are STUPID”..

    I remember him recalling whatt his father told him when he was growing up in Eastern Europe. One of them being that when his father was in high school he and a group of friends would skip school early on Fridays and go over to his friend’s father’s butcher shop. That they would buy at cost any cows , that had not been butchered by the end of the day on Friday before the start of shabat . They would take the cow home and wash it and then the boys would procede to “beat the udders of the cows so that they would swell up and turn pink” so as to sell them to the “GOYISHE KUP” as milk producing cows.

    The part that I remember him asking me if the East Europeans are so naive, so gullible and so stupid to buy old “non milk producing cows” from a bunch of young Jewish Boys.

    So thinking of it now I agree with the Jewish saying that the “GOYISHE KUP” are indeed” Stupid” as they believe that a Bunch of Arab Moslem Kids who were not able to Fly a Cessna Airplane took it upon themselves to FLY a Jumbo 747 and outwitted the US Militaryand Civilian authorities. The “Jewish Lightning Insurance Scam” of the 1960’s is still alive and well has been put to good use by Larry Silverstein in putting 15 million down and comming out with 7 billion dollars for buidings that no one wanted to buy because it would have cost a billion dollars to remove the asbestos from. Then on top of that the people in America actually believe that they actually decide who is elected President or for that that actual VOTE is really counted and makes a difference in deciding who represents them in the White House and congress.

     

  6. by Carolyn

    On December 21, 2012 at 3:41 am

    I remember him recalling whatt his father told him when he was growing up in Eastern Europe.

    Do you believe every story you hear? This may be a Jewish fable.

     

  7. by Darlene

    On December 23, 2012 at 6:30 am

    The 3rd man on the bottom row doesn’t look right. His body looks way too thin to match the fullness of his face. What do you think?

     

  8. by Carolyn

    On December 23, 2012 at 7:49 am

    You have a point, Darlene, but there is nothing that looks unnatural about it that I can see. Anybody?

    Another area that I find questionable is the raised up man between “elie wiesel” and the guy with the white head covering. It doesn’t look to me that he has room to fit into that space. There are horizontal slats between the bunks so each bunk area is contained. The face of the balding man could easily have been pasted in there. I’m curious about the small, rectangular metal box (?) that is under “elie wiesel’s” chin — I don’t see another one anywhere.

    It would be interesting to know if there were other shots taken of this scene that still exist. Like the NYTimes having the photo of before the standing man was added. Could there be other negatives that show some of these men missing? We know the 4th man, and maybe even the 5th man, on the bottom would not be in the original picture.

     

  9. by HH

    On December 25, 2012 at 11:36 pm

    Are you saying the New York Times blacked out what was by the pole?

    I think the floating bearded head over the third bunk post looks like the same person as the naked guy standing.

     

  10. by Carolyn

    On December 26, 2012 at 2:23 am

    To HH – No, I’m not saying that, although some people may, and probably will, say it. I’m saying that the man was not there at the time the picture was taken and was added later, as a photo montage. Whatever the New York Times did or didn’t do doesn’t change the fact that this man was not in the original photo because of his position in space vis a vis the post.

    While I don’t think the “floating bearded head over the third bunk post” (3rd man from left in top row) is the same person as the standing man, I do think all those top row heads could easily be photo montage, too. I am especially suspicious of the first guy — notice how his forehead on the right side (his left) doesn’t end but keeps going straight up to the edge of the picture. It should begin to curve or meet a hairline. He looks like one of those “dome-head” characters. I notice that his forehead is lighter on the right side, with the difference in tone breaking straight up the middle. Thus, the whole right side of the forehead (his left) looks to me to have been painted in.

    I also question whether the 6th man from the left in the second row has the actual physical space available to be wedged in between “elie wiesel” behind him and the man with the white head covering in front of him. There are horizontal slats between the bunks so it’s not possible to have one’s body partly over into the next bunk to make more room for a fourth person. I would be interested in hearing opinions on that.

     

  11. by Carolyn

    On December 26, 2012 at 2:59 am

    Other heads to question are the first on the left in the 2nd and 3rd rows, with the face turned toward the other men. They really looks like the same person, and I now believe they are, although I could not prove it. But one recognizes that sort of thing. Someone brought this up to me earlier, but I don’t remember who. They are, of course, different shots, not the same one, but the same person.

     

  12. by Paul

    On May 3, 2013 at 9:39 pm

    New York Times from May 6th 1945
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4njwU3sbvx0

     

  13. by lena

    On November 8, 2014 at 10:28 pm

    If they were three to a bunk, why do several of them have a bunk to themselves?

     

  14. by Erik Edwards

    On February 6, 2017 at 8:21 am

    The photo is not a fraud. I have an original that my grandfather took and the standing man is in fact in the photo. That leads me to believe that The New York Times, for some reason had faked the photo.

     

  15. by Carolyn

    On February 10, 2017 at 12:02 pm

    Oh really. Please do send us your grandfathers “original,” Eric. I think that’s the least you could do.

     

  16. by Evan

    On May 12, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    The original negative of this photograph is now in the custody of the National Archives in College Park Maryland. The negative number is 111-SC-203647 and shows the man standing on the right. The original caption of the print made from the negative reads “These are slave laborers in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Jena; many have died from malnutrition when US troops of the 80th Division entered the camp. Germany, April 16, 1945. Pvt. H. Miller. (Army)”

     

  17. by Carolyn

    On May 24, 2017 at 7:49 am

    Evan – I have written to your contact at the National Archives questioning what “original negative” means. He did not use the word “original.” I’ll check back in when I hear from him.

    5-25-17 — Okay, I quickly heard back from Michael Bloomfield of the Still Pictures Reference Team, confirming your information that this photo is marked as the original negative from Private H. Miller on April 16, 1945. They have two negatives with the same number, one is marked “cropped” although it appears identical.

    Anyway, while the standing figure could have been deleted by the New York Times for reasons of their own when they first published it, there are other anomalies in the photo that convince me it is doctored. A possible explanation: the U.S. Army Signal Corp was known to have impressive photo forgery capabilities, so many photographs could have been/were doctored on the negative before they were released. Just because “a negative” sits in the National Archives doesn’t mean it represents the original scene as the photographer saw it.

    I stand by my research in this article: http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/break-the-spell-magic-and-trickery-are-what-the-holocaust-is-made-of/ I think what we see with our own eyes speaks for itself. Please read all the text because I didn’t put captions under the pictures to explain them. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

    P.S. See also: http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/a-second-naked-man-in-buchenwald-barracks-forgery/ and http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/max-hamburger-says-he-is-the-man-in-the-lower-bunk/

     

  18. by hermod

    On October 18, 2018 at 6:29 pm

    The 2017 Israeli version of it…

    http://www.trueactivist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Screen-Shot-2017-01-20-at-4.04.46-PM.png

    http://www.trueactivist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Screen-Shot-2017-01-20-at-4.04.57-PM.png

    Artist Shames Tourists Who Took Disrespectful Selfies At Holocaust Memorial

    https://anonhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Holocaust-696×381.jpg

    Israeli artist Shahak Shapira,
    art project called “Yolocaust”

     

  19. by P.O.Gromoff

    On September 20, 2023 at 1:06 pm

    Absolutely all photographs related to Buchenwald are located at:
    fotoarchiv.buchenwald.de

     

Trackbacks

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