The woman in the photo wears a striped prisoner uniform marked with the number 50446, gazing seriously into the camera. The caption at the bottom of the photo reveals her name: Neus Català.
Català, a Catalan nurse and communist, fled to France like many other republicans following their defeat by Franco’s troops in the Spanish Civil War. In the south of France, she joined the communist resistance organization Front National during the German occupation and smuggled weapons and documents as a courier. In November 1942, she was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, from where she was transferred to the Holleischen subcamp in April 1944.1
A few months after the liberation of the camp in May 1945, Català, who was unable to return to her homeland now ruled by Franco, had herself photographed in her prisoner’s clothing, in a photo studio in Sarlat-la-Canéda in region of Périgord. I would like to take a closer look at this photography in order to analyse and classify the motifs and the circumstances of its creation.
In concentration camps, prisoners were forbidden to take photographs, and the guards themselves were also prohibited from doing so within the camp. Only the identification service and the camp construction managers were permitted to take photographs for certain purposes. Apart from a few exceptions, in which prisoners managed to take photos undetected and smuggle them out of the camp2, the only opportunity for documentation and the creation of (self-)portraits came in the form of secret drawings. It was only after the liberation of the camps that members of the Allied troops photographed what they found in order to capture the extent of the Nazi crimes.3 In this context, group photos of survivors in their prisoner clothing were staged.4 The fact that Català went to a photographer in her prisoner clothing a few weeks or even months after her liberation from the camp, when she was back in France is rather unusual, although such pictures have also been handed down by some other concentration camp survivors.5
Prisoners’ clothing as a symbol of resistance
So why did Català go to a photo studio in the fall of 1945 and have herself photographed in her prisoner clothing from the Holleischen subcamp? Why did she reproduce her identity as a prisoner instead of re-appropriating her femininity, which had been taken away from her by the SS in the concentration camp through the shaving of her hair and the uniform, shapeless clothing? Surviving women in particular often wanted to get rid of their prison clothing quickly after liberation. The “clothing either striped or marked with a white cross was buried in the forest as soon as they had something else to hand”.6 The prisoners’ clothing, initially a symbol of the oppression and de-individualization of the people deported, also changed its meaning with liberation. It could become a symbol of survival and a marker of a newly acquired identity. Stephan Matyus writes about photographs that Francisco Boix, another Catalan prisoner of the Mauthausen concentration camp, took of his comrades in their prisoner clothing immediately after liberation: “Although some survivors had already changed into civilian clothes, they reverted to the striped prisoner jacket for the photo series. […] In Boix’s hands, the camera […] now gave the liberated prisoners a new self-image, which was to bear witness to the fact that although they were prisoners of the concentration camp, their spirit of resistance was not broken. “7
Català thus reappropriated her prisoner clothing as a symbol of resistance and survival and looks seriously and resolutely into the camera. It was not a matter of course that Català returned to France in these very clothes. She told the historian Elisenda Belenguer Mercadé: “In March, they gave us the summer dress, which was so bad that it looked like a transparent robe, but this year, when they liberated us, they still hadn’t given it to us. So I wore the winter dress. We kept it because we wanted to go back in it, even though the Allies brought us other clothes!“8
Immediately after liberation, many freed concentration camp inmates regarded their clothing as an important symbol testifying to their suffering and resistance, which in turn emphasized their role as survivors and witnesses. Former political prisoners in particular proudly adopted the often blue and white striped prisoners’ clothing as well as the red triangle that marked their prisoner group and their own prisoner number. The latter thereby could paradoxically become a symbol of individual identity. Since 1945, the prisoners’ clothing has been worn by former prisoners at commemoration ceremonies and political demonstrations in order to express a moral authority.9 Bärbel Schmidt identifies three reasons for this practice: Firstly, the educational aim to remember and admonish; secondly, the collective commemoration of the dead; and thirdly, the visualization of belonging to the prisoner community.10
I would now like to look at the second aspect mentioned by Schmidt: Neus Català’s facial expression in this photograph is not only serious and determined, it also appears to be inward-looking as well as characterized by grief and concern. In addition to the grief she must have felt for her dead comrades, which accompanied many survivors, Català must have also been worried about her husband Albert Roger. It was only after this photo was taken that she learned that he had died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly before its liberation.11
Stubborn “icon of survival”
Is this photograph, in which Català initially appears to be the depicted object and not the acting subject, a testimony? I would answer this question with a definitive yes. Català decided to go to a photographer for this image in her prisoner’s clothing, allowing herself to be captured by the photographer as a former prisoner, survivor and witness. In this way, she regained control over her own image, which had been taken from her as a victim of persecution. She set an example of anti-fascist resistance in her ongoing political exile. In doing so, she circumvented the expectations of her own family to forget her experiences as quickly as possible after her return from deportation. She instead idiosyncratically held on to the memory of the camp. In Cornelia Brink’s words, the photograph is thus both “an impression of ‘reality’ and its interpretation ”12 by Català. The picture calls into question a strict chronology separating a time “in the camp” and that “after the liberation”. Shortly after this picture was taken, her sister-in-law burned the clothes Català had brought with her from the concentration camp, together with letters that her husband Albert had sent her during her imprisonment.
In any case, this picture did not fail to make an impact; the photographer who took the picture in 1945 refused to accept payment from Català. To this day, this photo is the most published image of Neus Català (1915−2019), who achieved a high degree of fame through her tireless political engagement in France and Spain. In this respect, the image became an “icon of survival” produced by a survivor on her own initiative, which differs from the “icons of extermination”, the images that Allied photographers took at the sites of former concentration camps of the survivors and those who were murdered.
If we view photographs as intentional stagings of the self, of the photographer or the photographed person, they must be taken seriously as testimonies, especially in the context of persecution, to trace the intentions behind them.
Translation: Nils Bergmann
References
- Around 200 Spanish women were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp and from there often to various subcamps. Most of them had fled the Franco regime and had already lived in France for several years, which is why most of them were registered as French women. On the deportation of Català and other women from Spain imprisoned in German concentration camps, see Neus Català, In Ravensbrück ging meine Jugend zu Ende. Fourteen Spanish women report on their deportation to German concentration camps, Berlin 1994.
- One example are the photographs taken in secret by Polish women in Ravensbrück concentration camp who were themselves victims of medical experiments. See Andrea Genest, Fotografien als Zeugnis. Häftlingsfotografien aus dem Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, in: Hildegard Frübis et al. (ed.), Fotografien aus den Lagern des NS-Regimes. Beweissicherung und ästhetische Praxis, Vienna 2019, p. 85–111.
- On the creation and dissemination of these images, see Cornelia Brink, Ikonen der Vernichtung. Öffentlicher Gebrauch von Fotografien aus nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern nah 1945, Berlin 1998.
- See, for example, a group photo of liberated prisoners taken in the Holleischen subcamp, https://www.gedenkstaette-flossenbuerg.de/de/geschichte/aussenlager/holleischen, accessed on 16.06.2023. Photographer unknown.
- See, for example, David Rojkowski, Von Umbrüchen und Wendepunkten. Über das Umdeuten und Aneignen der NS-Lagersymbolik durch KZ Häftlinge, in: Axel Drecoll, Maren Jung-Diestelmeier (ed.), Bruchstücke ’45. Von NS-Gewalt, Befreiungen und Umbrüchen im Jahr 1945, Berlin 2021, p. 153–161. David Rojkowski deals with a similar portrait photo of the French concentration camp survivor Bernard Dutasta.
- Insa Eschebach, Katharina Zeiher, Ravensbrück 1945, Der lange Weg zurück ins Leben. Autobiografische Zeugnisse von Überlebenden des Frauen-Konzentrationslagers, in: Insa Eschebach, Gabriele Hammermann, Thomas Rahe (ed.), Repatriierung in Europa 1945, Berlin 2016, p. 72.
- Stephan Matyus, Die Befreiung von Mauthausen, die fotografische Perspektive eines Häftlings: Francisco Boix, in: Frübis, Fotografien aus den Lagern, p. 167.
- Testimony of Neus Català based on interviews conducted by Elisenda Belenguer Mercadé for the biography “Neus Català, memòria i lluita” (Barcelona 2006). I would like to thank Elisenda Belenguer Mercadé as well as Carme Martí and Margarita Català for various pieces of information on this photograph and the context in which it was taken.
- See Alexander Prenninger, Symbole und Rituale der Befreiungsfeiern in der KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen, in: Ulrike Dittrich, Sigrid Jacobeit (ed.), KZ-Souvenirs. Erinnerungsobjekte der Alltagskultur im Gedenken an die nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen, Potsdam 2005, pp. 40–54; and Bärbel Schmidt, Geschichte und Symbolik der gestreiften Häftlingskleidung, phil. Diss. Univ. Oldenburg 2000, p. 272 ff.
- Schmidt, Geschichte und Symbolik, p. 273.
- This and other information on the context in which the photo was taken comes from an email exchange the author had with Margarita Català, daughter of Neus Català, in the early summer of 2023.
- Brink, Ikonen der Vernichtung, p. 10.