Malibu Photographer’s Exhibit
Illuminates Aspects of the Holocaust
• UCLA Surgeon Brings Unique
Perspective to the Horrors of World War II
Since the end of World War II, there have
been public denials of the Holocaust. With this resurgence of
denials by such notables as Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen,
controversial American David Duke and the late chess champion
Bobby Fischer, Malibu resident Richard Ehrlich's latest
photography work, “The Holocaust Archives at the
International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen,” is an answer
to the Holocaust deniers.
In his portfolio, which will be on exhibit
at the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica from Aug. 26-30, are
photographs of Schindler’s list as well as records of
horrific atrocities that occurred in the Nazi concentration
camps.
While traveling in 2004, Ehrlich said he
read about the International Tracing Service, located in Bad
Arolsen, Germany and its archives of over 50 million Nazi
documents involving more than 17 million people. He knew he had
to see and perhaps photograph it.
After several futile attempts to gain
access to the low-profile organization, he contacted someone in
the State Department who got him access immediately. What he
discovered during two trips in 2007 was something that he
characterizes as life changing.
“I went over on the strength of not
knowing what I was going to find,” he said. “I knew
it would be interesting, but I didn’t know if it
would be worthy of a photographic project, and it turned out to
be great.”
Not only did the ITS give him access
to everything in their archives, which are housed in several
buildings, they also provided him with a guide who pointed out
some of the more interesting documents.
Ehrlich took over 1000 pictures, and culled
them down to a 54-photo exhibit, which was first shown at the
American Jewish Committee’s annual meeting in New York,
in May where it was viewed by more than 1000 people.
The committee chose 28 of the photos for
its portfolio and accompanied each picture with a detailed
caption. This exhibit, and possibly more of Ehrlich’s ITS
pictures, will be on display next week at the gallery. It is in
seven museums around the world, including the United States
Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the Musee d’Art in
Paris and the Special Collections at the UCLA Young Research
Library.
The exhibit shows the horrors of the
concentration camps, as well as the obsessive record keeping of
the Nazis. “Overall, the funny thing is [the Nazis] were
meticulous in their record-keeping—even though what they
were doing was just so horrible-they wrote everything
down,” Ehrlich says.
Examples of this are his photographs from
ledger books with records of the number of lice removed
from each prisoner as they arrived at the camps. Perhaps one of
the most jarring is yet another record from Hitler’s
birthday celebration documenting the execution of one person
every two minutes for an hour, which was ordered by Himmler.
“What’s in [the ITS archives]
is what’s left,” says Ehrlich. “At the end of
the war things happened very quickly and they tried to destroy
the records, but they couldn’t, there was too much. Even
with all the destruction, there were still 50 million pieces of
paper left.”
Ehrlich says that this exhibit is
especially important because the ITS is in the process of
digitalizing its archives, making them more accessible to
people. “It’s been interesting, because although
this place is not a secret, they’ve kept it inaccessible
for the most part since 1951—even relatives of Holocaust
victims had a difficult time getting any documentation, and I
don’t really know why,” he says. “I
think it has to do with money—reparations—because
even though the International Red Cross runs it, it’s
paid for by the German government.”
This was not Ehrlich’s first glimpse
into the concentration camps. In 1958, while studying at
Cornell University, he visited Poland, Czechoslovakia and
Russia as an exchange student and he saw a crematorium at
Auschwitz. “They’ve knocked them down,
subsequently, but I remember it vividly,” he says,
describing the experience as “mind-bending.”
Ehrlich, who has lived in Malibu since the
early 1970’s, is a surgeon at UCLA. His interest in
photography started at an early age, but was sidelined when he
pursued his medical career. He picked photography up again
about seven years ago “in a very serious manner”
and his work has been shown in various museums and galleries
around the world.
His photographs cover a wide range of
subjects, including his travels in Namibia (which has been
published as a book, “”Namibia: The Forbidden
Zone”) and Vietnam, as well as the construction of the
UCLA Medical center, and Malibu, all of which can be viewed on
his website ehrlichphotography.com.
“I’ve been fortunate to be very successful in a
short period of time,” he says.
Ehrlich is currently working on his latest
project, “The Art of the Body: the Body as Art,”
which he expects to complete in six months and will be
published as a book. “Being a doctor, I always wanted to
do something that tied into it and I have a project using
X-rays and MRIs.”
He says, “Because I’m a
physician, I’ve gotten access to things most people
don’t see.” He emphasizes that the exhibit is
“not about diseases or medical things, per se, but about
the beauty of the body—the artistic side.”
For now though, Ehrlich is concentrating on
his exhibit, “The Holocaust Archives at the International
Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen,” and ensuring that images
of this time stay alive so that history does not repeat itself.
“I didn’t know much about the
Holocaust, but of course, now after this project, I know so
much and it's a life-altering experience, there’s no
question about it. You can’t believe anything like this
ever happened.”
