Shannon Trubatch
Imaginary Worlds Assignment 2
ENG201

Behind the Lens: Photographs of the Holocaust Religion has been found to be, time and time again, a factor that influences the actions taken by many, both kind and cruel, across the globe and throughout history. My mother is a Christian, and I grew up in a household celebrating Christian holidays and attending church on Sundays. My father, however, was raised in Long Island in a Jewish home, where he celebrated Hanukah, had a bar mitzvah, and went to temple. As I grew up, I would learn of the history of the world, but nothing would strike me more than the events of the Holocaust. As I continued to learn and grow older, I would begin to understand the atrocities that took place during this time, half a world a way, and the images and films that I saw in regards to the Holocaust would haunt me most of all. A photo essay, compiled by the English department at the University of Illinois, contains a number of photographs from the Holocaust that demonstrates the atrocities that occurred during this time. These photographs support the argument developed by Susan Sontag that photographers must make the decision between a photograph and a life, and that the viewers of these images also have a responsibility to actions of atrocity and human suffering. In Susan Sontag’s book On Photography, she develops the argument that photography is an act of nonintervention; that the photographer is faced with the choice between capturing a photograph of atrocity and putting an effort to stop the atrocity. Sontag brings up an interesting point that you cannot have it both way, you either capture the photo or intervene whatever atrocity may be beyond the lens of the camera. It is in this sense that photographer is faced with a ethical and moral decision, and it causes us to question the responsibility of those of us who are faced