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Mystery Nazi Photographer Identified

Franz Krieger took propaganda photos, including of Jews

by
Marc Tracy
June 22, 2011
Jewish prisoners in Minsk.(Franz Krieger/NYT Lens)
Jewish prisoners in Minsk.(Franz Krieger/NYT Lens)

The incredible photographs of Adolf Hitler, German soldiers, and Jewish prisoners in occupied Soviet Belarus (including the Minsk Ghetto) that the New York Times Lens blog posted yesterday (and that I linked to) were the handiwork of one Franz Krieger, Lens quickly learned. Harriet Scharnberg, a scholar primarily of Nazi propaganda photographs that depicted Jews, wrote in to make the identification. Krieger died in 1993, although his wife (featured in several of the photographs) and two-year-old child were killed in Allied bombardment of Salzburg, Austria, in 1944.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.