Yevgeny Khaldei at Nuremberg

Introduction

Images

Catalogue

There he was, Yevgeny Khaldei in his Soviet naval uniform, taking pictures in the center of the Nuremberg Trial. It must have seemed like a good assignment to him after covering the front lines of World War Two for the Soviet TASS news agency. The war in Europe had ended in April of 1945 - every bomb that was to go off already had - and some of the most prominent members of the Nazi regime sat in the dock, on trial. It was a valedictory moment which you can see in the expressions of the allied prosecution. After six years of watching the politics of Europe creep inexorably towards armed conflict and genocide, during which the only form of control was resistance, the allies were finally in a position to put everything back in its place. Good had won out over bad, and the guys in black hats had the burden of proof.

It was a difficult assignment for Khaldei and the other photojournalists. Access to the courtroom at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg was tightly governed under rules drafted by the Americans. Three glass enclosures were distributed along the edges of the room, and photographers were confined to them, two-by-two, and given only three minutes to shoot. One enclosure faced the dock, another faced the justices, and the third faced the those who had gathered to observe the historical proceedings. The first time Khaldei had a turn in one of the enclosures, he used up the allotted three minutes just setting up his equipment. Afterwards he would use either the handheld Speed Graphic press camera given to him by Robert Capa, or a 35mm Leica. In at least one instance, Khaldei was able to circumvent this restriction by bribing an assistant to one of the Soviet justices with a bottle of gin in exchange for his seat - the seat that yielded one of the most interesting photographs of Hermann Göring and the Nuremberg Trial, Unusual Perspective.

Hermann Göring is the central figure in many of these photographs. Till the end of the war he had been in command of the Luftwaffe, literally the 'Air Weapon,' directing the Blitzkrieg on London, and other offenses. In these photographs, however, he has become transformed into something different. So has the gray, military uniform he obstinately continued to wear - no longer a symbol of prestige and power, but a mark of his infamy. We see him shifting nervously in the witness seat and in the dock, speaking guardedly with his lawyer in a jail cell, and wrapping mysteriously a blanket around his mid-section. Yevgeny Khaldei pursued him aggressively and captured him. In Von Moskau Nach Berlin by Ernst Volland and Heinz Krimmer (Parthas, 1999), Khaldei is quoted as saying, "I took lots of pictures of Göring because I thought, 'Hitler is dead.' That makes Göring public enemy number one. I took pains to be near him at all times." And this is one of the reasons that these photographs are fascinating: a topsy-turvy inversion of power. It is just and ironic that a Russian Jew should be in a position to calmly dissect Hermann Göring, and especially Rudolf Hess - the former Commandant of the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

Khaldei often referred to one incident that perfectly illustrates this "world turned upside down." An American MP came to Khaldei and the other Soviet photographers and invited them to photograph some of the defendants, who had been permitted to gather in a side chamber to eat. As usual, Khaldei zeroed in on Göring, who perhaps offended by his Soviet naval uniform, covered his face with his hands. Seeing this, an American guard came over to Göring and hit him with a truncheon to secure his cooperation. The former Air Marshall never really forgave him this embarrassment. Towards the end of the trial, but before the sentencing, Khaldei had his portrait taken standing near Göring by an American photographer. In it, he is standing proudly in his formal Soviet Naval uniform, holding the Speed Graphic camera. His expression is not light: with the exception of his mother, his entire family had been slaughtered by the Germans in 1941. The camera in his hand is braced against his arm, and it is clear that it was the weapon with which he had found his retribution. To his left, Hermann Göring is sitting in the dock with his face completely covered by his hand.

The trial took place in the main chamber of the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. One side of the room held the defendants - twenty-one nazis of the first rank, sitting discretely behind their wooden partition - surrounded by armed guards in white helmets. Across from the dock, two Justices from each of the four allied nations sat in front of their respective flags. Between them were various court functionaries: clerks, translators, stenographers, and others. At the far end, stood the witness stand, flanked by armed guards in white helmets. The prosecutors were stationed at the end closest to the entrance. The observation gallery was near the entrance, filled with journalists and spectators. Photographic views of the room feel claustrophobic. The figures are small, closely packed in, and almost entirely wearing headsets manufactured by IBM.

These photographs capture much of what happened during the Nuremberg Trial. Almost all of the major figures are represented: Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, Chief British Justice and President of the Court; Robert Jackson, Chief U.S. Prosecutor; Thomas J. Dodd, first Associate, later Deputy U.S. Prosecutor; Sir Norman Birkett, the Alternate British Justice; of course, the defendants; and countless others. They also capture something intangible about the trial - its strange mixture of validation and dejection. The image of Dodd staring down the shrunken head of a Polish worker which had been found in use as a concentration camp commandant's desk ornament is an example. It suggests a direct confrontation with evil precisely as much as it suggests the scene in Hamlet in which Shakespeare's title character reflects on Yorick's skull. It is likely that Thomas Dodd made this pose purposefully, if not playfully. Is it a stretch to compare the allied nations' situation to Hamlet's, but without moral ambiguity?

An interesting question to be asked: if Nazi defendant Ernst Kaltenbrunner, (who had been in charge of both the Gestapo and the SS,) had been an amateur photographer and had taken photographs from inside the dock, what would they have looked like? Would they have shown Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson looking like a buffoon? Would his fellow defendants have posed like Christian martyrs? Perspective shapes photography, and the photographs in this exhibition could only have been taken by a Russian Jew, whose family had been decimated in the war, and whose life had been forever changed by the particular brutality these men had engineered.