Johann Niemann carefully curated the photographs he collected from his time as a high-level officer at the Sobibor killing center. The few prisoners who appear are reduced to anonymous background figures, incidental to the Nazis. The perpetrators are shown in a parallel universe of camaraderie, social activities, and leisure, just steps away from systematic cruelty and mass murder on an industrial scale.
A Meticulously Crafted Self-Image
Niemann poses on horseback on the arrival ramp at Sobibor, summer 1943. —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz
Niemann posed very self-consciously for these pictures. He sought to portray himself as a figure of authority and high rank—a member of the Nazi self-proclaimed “racial elite.” One image shows Niemann posing on a horse, towering over the same platform where victims were forced from deportation trains. For dramatic impact, the photographer had stepped down onto the rail tracks to capture Niemann’s image from below. A site of horror became the backdrop for a vanity shot.
In another photograph, Niemann stands next to the well inside the barnyard of Camp II. Behind him are the stables with the commandant’s horses. He holds a riding crop and speaks to an SS man of lower rank. Niemann was then at the high point of his SS career. That spring, Heinrich Himmler, the Reich Leader of the SS, had inspected the Sobibor killing center. Following his visit, Niemann was promoted to the officer’s rank of SS-Untersturmführer.