Presented by Dr. Julie R. Keresztes
American University and Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Postdoctoral Fellow

In 1933 Nazi officials began bullying non-Jewish Germans into severing ties with their Jewish friends and neighbors to hasten the isolation of Jews from German public life. They used photography to achieve both goals, not just to harass and humiliate Jews, but to monitor and shame non-Jewish Germans into compliance as well.

This practice of photographic denunciation, in which Nazi leaders and functionaries took and displayed pictures of non-Jewish Germans shopping at Jewish-owned businesses, helped destroy the remaining bonds between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans. Enacted from 1933-1938 in Germany and beyond German borders during the Second World War, photographic denunciation successfully turned many non-Jewish Germans against Jews, a key precursor to the ability of the Nazi regime to perpetrate the Holocaust.

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This program is made possible by the generosity of the Wagner-Braunsberg Family Foundation as part of our ongoing series on German-Jewish heritage.

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Dr. Julie R. Keresztes is a historian of modern Germany who specializes in photography during the Third Reich and the Holocaust. She is the American University and Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Postdoctoral Fellow. Keresztes received her doctorate with distinction in history from Boston University and is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the German Historical Institute, the Leo Baeck Institute, the American Academy for Jewish Research, and the Central European History Society. She is currently finishing a book manuscript on photography in Nazi Germany, and is working on a critical biography of Heinrich Hoffmann, Adolf Hitler’s personal photographer.