Does This Photo Show Wedding Rings Taken from Holocaust Victims?
“Every wedding ring here represents a home broken and a human murdered by the Germans." Some of the most chilling photographs documenting the horrors of the Holocaust feature neither the perpetrators nor the victims of that genocide. Rather, these haunting images document enormous caches of suitcases, clothing, hair, shoes, eyeglasses, artificial limbs, jewelry teeth, and other items confiscated from victims sent to various Nazi death camps: Auschwitz's concentration camp: the hangar of shoes. Roger Viollet via Getty Images-34332 (Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images/Roger Viollet via Getty Images) Such pictures are spine-chilling both because they provide an easily assimilable visual depiction of the sheer scale and enormity of the Holocaust, and because they offer a visceral reminder of how Nazi ideology viewed certain classes of human beings as nothing more than raw material to be exploited and disposed of: Accused Nazi war criminal Josef Schwammberger used pliers