The Iasi Pogrom, June

More than 13,000 Jews were murdered during nine days in the early summer of 1941 in Romania: in Iasi (Jassy) and in two death trains. This pogrom is one of the most thoroughly visually documented events of the Holocaust in that members of the Romanian intelligence services photographed the continuing massacre that they themselves were coordinating. German troops, present in the city and involved in the massacre, were allowed to photograph the atrocities and to send those "souvenirs" of the Eastern Front to their family members. Yet these images are, for the most part, unknown to the general public. Long inaccessible even to scholars, the Romanian archives opened recently under pressure from civil society. The 127 photographs shown and described in this album, accompanied by survivors' and even perpetrators' testimonies, were collected after the war but most of this evidence remained hidden away for decades. Together they are invaluable and provide unique insight into this monstrous crime committed by the Romanian fascist and brutally antisemitic regime of General Ion Antonescu, a faithful ally of Nazi Germany.