Yad Vashem memorial Holocaust exhibition shows power, danger of pictures

In the heart of Israel’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, pictures glorifying Hitler and dehumanising Jews are displayed alongside harrowing images of Jewish ghettos and the liberation of death camps. The pictures displayed at Yad Vashem are part of a new exhibition juxtaposing photos taken by Nazi perpetrators, Jewish victims and members of Allied forces who witnessed the horrors of the death camps first-hand at the end of World War II. The exhibit, called “Flashes of Memory”, opened Wednesday ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. The differing perspectives offer a complex look at the Holocaust, from Nazi propaganda to photographs showing the suffering in death camps. “Visual documentation during the Holocaust shaped the way we perceive the Holocaust and analyse it, and affected the way it was engraved in the collective memory,” said Vivian Uria, the director of Yad Vashem’s museums division, who curated the exhibition.