I’ve been colourising photos professionally since 2015.
From Lenin to Winston Churchill; from the Titanic leaving port in 1912 to the Battle of Verdun. I even have covered lots of of years and added color to iconic photos and to those by which the themes will without end remain anonymous.
But it surely was colourising the photo of Czeslawa Kwoka in 2016 that had the most important impact.
Czeslawa (pictured above) was a 14-year-old girl who was killed in Auschwitz. She was a Polish Roman Catholic and was murdered one month after the death of her mother.
The photo went viral in a matter of minutes. The response was absolutely incredible and shocking. I used to be contacted by TV channels, newspapers, and magazines from all around the world wanting to know more concerning the photo and about Czeslawa.
More importantly though, I received messages from teachers asking if they might use the photo of their classes and a 12-year-old girl wrote a poem inspired by the photograph and sent it to me.
That’s once I realised how much people still needed to learn concerning the Holocaust and the potential of something as simple as a colourised photo in helping to teach. Today, on the eightieth anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), that is more essential than ever.
It’s essential to share individuals’ stories and photos since it’s very easy to wander off within the sheer scale of the Holocaust.
Six million Jewish lives and greater than 3million non-Jewish people’s lives were taken and that may be a huge number.
But after we break down this number and transform it into a person – pairing an image of their face when we are able to – people can begin to know the impact that the Holocaust had, and still has.
That they had every little thing taken away from them because of pure bigotry and hate.
In the identical week because the photo went viral, I asked the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum permission to colourise more photographs. They gave me access to their archives, where almost 40,000 concentration camp registration photos are stored.
The images were taken between February 1941 and January 1945. The preserved photos – 31,969 of men and 6,947 of girls – constitute only a fraction of an unlimited Nazi archive destroyed throughout the camp evacuation in January 1945.
Those that remained were secure because of the heroic efforts of Wilhelm Brasse, the photographer, who was also a prisoner, and his colleagues.
They were ordered to burn your entire photo collection throughout the evacuation of Auschwitz, but as a substitute they covered the furnace with wet photographic paper before adding a terrific variety of photos and negatives.
This prevented the smoke from escaping and made the fireplace exit quickly. When the SS guard who was supervising left the laboratory, Brasse and his colleagues retrieved the undestroyed photographs from the furnace.
After getting permission from the museum to colourise the photos that Brasse saved, I put together a team of volunteers who helped me create Faces of Auschwitz, a platform where we not only colourise these photos, but tell the stories of those in them.
I do know that once I am colourising them that this might be the last photograph ever taken of this person.
Looking at each face for 2 to 3 hours is difficult, especially since I would like to read their death certificates before I begin to colourise. I spend the method wondering what was going through their minds while they were being photographed.
It’s emotionally draining work but it is necessary because I cannot forget what they represent and what happened to them. That is something that actually sunk in after I visited Auschwitz and the room by which the photos were taken.
This VE Day, I need people to recollect the faces of people like Czeslawa Kwoka. It’s 80 years since certainly one of the worst atrocities in modern history and it’s essential for his or her stories to proceed to be told.
When families of those now we have colourised approach us to share the photos of their relatives, it adds to the massive responsibility of our undertaking, but in addition proves that we’re on the correct path.
Ultimately, I hope that our project and documentary reaches a broader audience and we are able to proceed to share the stories and faces of those that so tragically had their lives taken away by hatred.
Do you’ve got a story you’d prefer to share? Get in contact by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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