‘Frozen moments’ is a free evening event at the Royal Wootton Bassett Academy on Tuesday 28th June 2016.

The workshop is based on a series of photographs taken on 26 May 1944 at Auschwitz-Birkenau when a train of Jewish men, women and children arrived from Hungary.

Image courtesy of Yad Vashem

When we hold a photograph in our hands it can feel as though we are looking directly on the past. A slice of time, a ‘frozen moment’ continues in the present, as though we hold the past in our hand. In this workshop we will consider photos from two extraordinary albums, one documenting the arrival and selection for murder of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the other a series of photos of the perpetrators of this crime at rest and play. Two ‘Auschwitz albums’ – but what do they really reveal about the Holocaust?

What we think we know about the past is partly shaped by how we ‘see’ it in our imaginations, and this is often shaped by a relatively small number of iconic images. For Auschwitz, these are the photos of the Lili Jacob album – the only photographic evidence we have of selections at a Nazi death camp. But how full and accurate a picture do such photographs really provide, and what other images might allow us to see the same place and time in different ways?

This practical workshop will explore how we can help young people, from Key Stage 3 to Sixth Form, to ‘read’ photographs as evidence, considering not only what each one shows but to ask what it reveals – about the perspective of the person who took the photograph, the ‘unwitting testimony’ that it provides, and what we can infer about the situation beyond the image that was framed by the photographer’s lens.

The event programme is as follows:

• 16:00 Registration, tea and coffee
• 16:15 Frozen Moments – what is revealed in the photographs of Auschwitz?
• 18:30 Food and wine reception

Workshop led by

Paul Salmons

UCL Centre for Holocaust Education