Tag: Mauthausen

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The Naked Heroine

First of all, my apologies to Mr. Izbicki, author of The Naked Heroine (see recommended reading below). I racked my brain trying to come up with a catchy title for this blog and I always returned to the title of his 1963 book, The Naked Heroine. It’s sort of like one of my more popular blogs, Cyndi Lauper and the Naked Princess. (Click here to read the blog.) As you all know, sex sells.

One of my prior blogs was about Josephine Baker (An African American in Pre-WWII Paris, click here to read). Josephine was an entertainer and stripper in Paris during the interwar period (the years between the two World Wars) and she became an international celebrity in those twenty years. During the German occupation of France, Josephine worked for the French Resistance collecting sensitive Nazi information from the German officers with whom she hobnobbed. Today, you will meet a young lady like Josephine but who structured her career in somewhat the reverse order. Lydia was first a French résistant and then after the war, spent the rest of her life taking off her clothes at the Folies Bergère and other popular clubs around Europe.

Lydia de Korczak Lipski wears the Legion of Honor on her military uniform. Photo by anonymous (c. March 1960). Cleveland Plain Dealer. Author’s collection.
Lydia de Korczak Lipski wears the Legion of Honor on her military uniform. Photo by anonymous (c. March 1960). Cleveland Plain Dealer. Author’s collection.

Besides being strippers and résistants, Lydia and Josephine shared one other attribute: they were both highly decorated French war heroines. Read More The Naked Heroine

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The Auschwitz Portraitist

The Nazis were known to keep meticulous records on just about everything. Amazingly, this was also true about their desire to establish a photographic record of their crimes. We are familiar with Hitler’s favorite filmmaker and director, Leni Riefenstahl (1902−2003). She was not only a filmmaker but also a photographer and yes, a Nazi. Her movies included Olympia (1936 Berlin Olympics) and the propaganda film on the 1934 Nazi rally at Nuremberg. There was Heinrich Hoffmann (1885−1957), Hitler’s personal and official Nazi photographer. Hoffmann was part of Hitler’s inner circle and played a significant role in Goebbel’s propaganda program to elevate Hitler in the eyes of German citizens. Both of these individuals are quite well known due to their historical visibility. However, there was a group of photographers who are not quite as famous as the Nazi propagandists. These were the Auschwitz photographers and they were inmates selected by the camp’s commandant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Höss.

Identity photographs of Auschwitz prisoners. Photographs by Wilhelm Brasse (c. 1940-45). Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
Identity photographs of Auschwitz prisoners. Photographs by Wilhelm Brasse (c. 1940-45). Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

Read More The Auschwitz Portraitist