Artist Colors Black and White Photos Showing Holocaust Atrocities to Help People Better Understand What Happened
More than 40% of Americans and 66% of millennials cannot say what Auschwitz was.
Colorized Holocaust photos can hit differently, and that is exactly the point of this project. By adding color to images many people have only seen in black and white, artist Joachim West is trying to make the history feel immediate instead of distant.
West, a first-generation American of Spanish-Jewish descent from Connecticut, focused on scenes from WWII and the Holocaust that many viewers may know only from textbooks. The images show the scale of the atrocities, while the color brings a sharper sense of reality to what happened.
That contrast is what makes this collection so hard to look away from.
1. Poland, 1939-40
Joachim West2. Colorized Photograph from Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Joachim West3. Colorized Photo from the Dachau Concentration Camp
Joachim West
4. Colorized Photograph of Anne Frank
Joachim West
West said he published the colored pictures on his Facebook and blog, but later realized that was not enough, so he worked on the picture restoration a bit more and shared them again. He also said he hoped other artists would help create more color pictures or improve the ones he had already colorized.
He added that he was interested in hearing from anyone who could help with the historical picture project in general.
This case mirrors the father of the Georgia school shooting incident convicted on all counts.
5. Poland, 1939-40
Joachim West
6. Poland, 1939-40
Joachim West
7. Wedding Bands Found During the Liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Joachim West
8. Colorized Photo of a Catholic Girl: Czesława Kwoka, 1942-43
Joachim West
9. Poland, 1939-40
Joachim West
10. Poland, 1939-40
Joachim West
Because some people believe the Holocaust never happened, historical authenticity is highly essential to West.
After all, the world is in full color in our eyes. He made a significant effort to collect and examine as many source images as possible, and because the concentration camps and many of the uniforms and patches still survive, he was able to sample the colors directly from current reference photographs.
Some people may ask why we should bring up something that happened so long ago. Well, it is so that it wouldn't happen again.
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