Distance from the Belsen Heap by Mark Celinscak

Author:Mark Celinscak
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4426-6878-2
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2015-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Many of Rodger’s photographs of the dead, as well as of the survivors, are taken from a noticeable distance. It is rare to find a macrophotographic image of the dead in his body of work of the camp. In sharp contrast, nearly all of his pictures of the camp staff and of Commandant Kramer offer an extreme close-up. The shots are taken from unusual angles, distorting the physical appearance of the perpetrator. And due to the sharp focus of the lens, the camera thus acts as judge and jury before facial expressions laid bare. This series of stark images comes across as if Rodger were somehow attempting a type of forensic analysis through his camera lens. Furthermore, many of these photographs are of the female camp guards; we see mostly only their faces: they often appear tough, hard, nasty, and, at times, even bewildered or without expression. One imagines a photographer filled with rage and revulsion.

Bergen-Belsen was the beginning of the end of George Rodger, war photographer. Aside from the last few weeks of the war, Rodger would never again photograph extreme violence. “I was not proud of my pictures,” he wrote in his essay for Time, “and I vowed never to cover another war or to profit by others’ suffering.”121 Immediately following the war, Rodger was ready to leave continental Europe behind, along with its death and violence. He longed to travel to Africa. A few years later his aspiration came true. In 1948 George Rodger began his journey through Africa in search of a people who had not contributed to the slaughter of the recent war.

While Rodger strove for personal expression and documentation in his efforts at the camp, other cameramen struggled to offer anything coherent in their work. Historian Cornelia Brink suggests that photographs, and thereby the photographers, frequently came into conflict between the “objectivity” of the medium and the “unreal” character of the events being captured.122 Canadian cameraman Al Calder of the CFPU felt his medium was unable to convey the awfulness of the camp. While he was overwhelmed by the experience, so too was his mechanism for documentation and representation. Calder observes that Bergen-Belsen was “one I hate to even think about; something that you could never put into a picture hit us … The sounds that came from these people, whimpering sounds, utter misery, unbelievable conditions.”123 He recorded what he could, but was left discontented with the results. Calder felt his photographs lacked a precision and were unable to unlock the potency of the actual event. And like so many other military personnel, it was more than just the visual that disturbed him. “The other thing that you can’t record is the unbelievable stench … Those are the things I can never forget, never.”124 Calder’s focus was on accurate documentation, and in this task he felt he was unable to adequately accomplish it. Pilot Officer Ron Laidlaw, who worked with the RCAF in public relations, offered a similar sentiment about his encounter. “A thousands rolls,” he mused, “would not have captured the horrors of Belsen.

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