Prisoner’s Hand Marks, 1944
Prisoner’s Hand Marks, 1944 This photograph was taken after the German occupation of France during WWII. It depicts the wall of a torture chamber on the Boulevard Victor in Paris. The desperate hands of prisoners have inflicted themselves into the asbestos as the effects of electrical current became more than they could bear. Such happenings may be forgiven but can’t be forgotten, not with this document. The Parsian Roger Schall had been allowed by the Nazis to photograph life there during the war, but with the liberation, he took very different kinds of pictures-like this one-and his work was used in postwar prosecutions. Schall’s brother published a book of such pictures at war’s end, and it became a mandatory buy in Paris. Incoming prisoners were assigned a camp serial number which was sewn to their prison uniforms. Only those prisoners selected for work were issued serial numbers; those prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were not registered and received no tattoos. Initial...