Are any of the allegations that some Holocaust photos are frauds true?

[Sergey Romanov]

The description was in German, so it was most likely not done by the Polish underground.

What a naive claim.
In Katyn they also found cartridges of German weapons, though the world know nowadays that the murderer were Soviet Russians.

Are you saying the Polish underground was as prone to lies as the Soviets?

[wm]

This photo does not show an execution, ie German soldiers shooting at the victims.

I meant both were made without authorization and illegally for unknown reasons, although probably by common policemen for fun.
As I understand it, the " in a line" photos were made officially, or at least by higher-ranking people.

[wm]

wm, no one needs to falsify photos. It´s enough to take them out of context, adding wrong informations or to hide correct informations as whole or partially.

Polish postal workers working for the Underground, and scanning German correspondence for interesting information, stole or delivered for quick copying the photos to the man who was doing microfilming.
The man additionally was building his own collection of such photos although it was strictly forbidden.
Later it was him who coauthored the book and wrote the articles using photos from his own collection.
So there is no much room for maneuver. The photo is real, or he is the forger.

[wm]

Missing pieces, straight from the regional public library:

u1.jpg

u3.jpg

u2.jpg

[Sergey Romanov]

Great.

The second inscription says: "Judenerschießung in Gr. Sewastjanowka".

Bolshaya Sevastyanovka is near Ivangorod:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Velyk ... 29.7716498

[Sergey Romanov]

Kruglov, Katastrofa ukrainskogo evrejstva 1941-1944:

"ВЕЛИКАЯ СЕВАСТЬЯНОВКА, село в Христиновском районе Черкасской области. В мае 1942 г. в В. С. была уничтожена 1 еврейская семья (8 чел.)."

Not sure about the source.

[wm]

So they bothered to go there just to to kill 8 Jews. Seems very proud of their work. Assuming there were small children among them, they all might be on that picture.

They wrote there the photographs were stolen by postal workers of the Warsaw Central Post Office, and they had access to the originals. They weren't copied.

[Gorque]

Interesting. The handwriting is the same but the paper stock is different. Would these photos have been developed near where the events occurred?

[Sergey Romanov]

The 2nd photo does tantalizingly look like the continuation of the 1st, and there may be the woman lying there, but where are the shovels and the disturbed earth?

[Gorque]

It appears to me that the 2 men in the back have white arm-bands. Some type of auxiliaries?

[Sergey Romanov]

Yes, could be Hiwis.

http://forum.ww2.ru/uploads/monthly_08_ ... 049411.jpg

[wm]

Interesting. The handwriting is the same but the paper stock is different. Would these photos have been developed near where the events occurred?

I don't think there are different, it's impossible to tell. The quality of the paper was bad, those were the darkest hours of communism (in the economic sense) after all. The print is passable ok, but there rest is not.
The only difference are the deckle edges on the second photograph. I'm not sure they are real. And anyway deckle edges were created with a special cutter, you didn't need a special photo paper for it. And frequently they were made randomly, some photos had them others not.

both.jpg

The 2nd photo does tantalizingly look like the continuation of the 1st, and there may be the woman lying there, but where are the shovels and the disturbed earth?

I think they suggested it was two different executions, only the "inscriptionist" was the same.

[history1]

Interesting that the Polish captions in the book calls them "members of a GENDARMERIE unit" and not from a Police unit.
Also it´s incorrect to reason that the writer of this captions took part in this executions because of the information on the back of the photos.

[Gorque]

Interesting. The handwriting is the same but the paper stock is different. Would these photos have been developed near where the events occurred?

I don't think there are different, it's impossible to tell. The quality of the paper was bad, those were the darkest hours of communism (in the economic sense) after all. The print is passable ok, but there rest is not.
The only difference are the deckle edges on the second photograph. I'm not sure they are real. And anyway deckle edges were created with a special cutter, you didn't need a special photo paper for it. And frequently they were made randomly, some photos had them others not.

Hi wm:

It was the edging that I was referring to. I have a quite a few old photos that from my parents that have similar edging while others that don't. It would just seem strange to have some photos have this edging while the others didn't if they came from the same printer at the same time. Anyhow, thanks for your work in digging them up.

[wm]

The edging (probably called deckle edges) is too small to be real. I've seen many of them and they as a rule were larger, I suppose smaller ones wouldn't be aesthetically pleasing (assuming they were aesthetically pleasing, it was something lower classes enjoyed).
As a kid I had that "edging" gadget, and ruined numerous photos with it. A very simple thing, I suppose many people had them pre- and during the war. Lots of people actually developed roll films and made prints themselves, it was quite easy and cheap.