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Photographs as Historic Documents: An Examination of Two of Evgenii Khaldei’s Budapest Photos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2017

Peter Pastor
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Extract

In a recent letter to the editor of Slavic Review, I took issue with the identification and interpretation of two photographs that appeared in an article titled “Heroes, Victims, Role Models: Representing the Child Soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising.” The scenes were mistakenly identified as taking place in wartime Warsaw. While various perspectives may be taken on how one uses and interprets photographs in other disciplines, as an historian, I believe it to be essential that a strict review of the photographs’ origin be examined since they may force us to come to different conclusions about the reality of historical events, and possibly perpetrators of crimes. The crux of my argument follows.

Type
Critical Forum: The Afterlife of Photographs
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 76 , Issue 1 , Spring 2017 , pp. 53 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2017 

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References

1. Burke, Peter, Eyewitnessing. The Uses of Image as Historical Evidence (Ithaca, 2001), 25 Google Scholar; and James Curtis “Making Sense of Documentary Photography,” in Making Sense of Evidence, at www.historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/photos/ (last accessed November 11, 2016).

2. Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History? (New York, 1961), 16.

3. In a recent publication Catherine E. Clark called the afterlife of photos the history of photographs. See Clark, Catherine E., “Capturing the Moment, Picturing History: Photographs of the Liberation of Paris,” The American Historical Review 121, no. 3 (2016): 827, 845CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Philip Gefter, “Capturing a Bygone Time,” New York Times, March 17, 2006, F4.

5. Shneer, David, “Picturing Grief: Soviet Holocaust Photography at the Intersection of History and Memory,” The American Historical Review 115, no. 1 (2010): 41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Shneer, David, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust (New Brunswick, 2011), 202 Google Scholar.

6. Shneer, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, 202.

7. Quoted in Shneer, “Picturing Grief,” 41; and Shneer, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, 201.

8. Quoted in Shneer, “Picturing Grief,” 41; and Shneer, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, 201.

9. Khaldei, Evgenii, Icons of War: Soviet Photographer, World War II. Schnold, Rachel, Galai, Chaya, Paymar, Andrea, eds. (Tel Aviv, 1999), 118Google Scholar.

10. Ibid., 57–58, 109, 127.

11. Ibid., 56–57.

12. Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Inv. 2006.43.003 Photographie. Evgueni Khaldei, “Une mère et sa fille abattues par les Allemands. Ghetto de Budapest, fin 1944,” at http://catalogue.mahj.org/collec.php?q=col&o=0I73v6072PDd4T86 (last accessed November 11, 2016).

13. Krisztián Ungváry and Gábor Tabajdi, Budapest a diktatúrák árnyékában [Budapest in the Shadow of Dictatorships] (Budapest, 2012), 39; and Jenő Lévai, A pesti gettó csodálatos megmenekülésének hiteles története [The True History of the Narrow Escape of the Pest Ghetto] (Budapest, 2014), 154, 273.

14. Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Inv. 2006.43.003 Photographie. The origins of Khaldei’s recollection are not identified.

15. Pető, Andrea, “Az elmondhatatlan emlékezet: A szoviet katonák által elkövetett nemi erőszak Magyarországon,” Rubicon 25, no. 2 (2014): 44–49 Google Scholar.

16. Andrea Pető, “A II. világháborús nemi erőszak történetírása Magyarországon” [The Historiography of Rape during World War II in Hungary], Mandiner, March 31, 2015, 6 of 10. The Khaldei photo is on the same page at www.mandiner.hu/cikk/20150331_peto_andrea_a_ii_vilaghaborus_nemi_eroszak_tortenetirasa_magyarorszagon (last accessed November 11, 2016).

17. Ibid., 7 of 10. Khaldei photo on p. 6.

18. Ibid., 7 of 10.

19. Burke, Eyewitnessing, 184–85. In an earlier essay on photographic representation, Pető footnoted Burke’s monograph. See Andrea Pető, “Death and the Picture. Representation of War Criminals and Construction of a Divided Memory about World War II in Hungary,” in Faces of Death: Visualizing History, ed. Andrea Pető and Klaartje Schrijvers (Pisa, 2009), 55 n9, at www.cliohres.net/books4/4/02.pdf (last accessed November 10, 2016).

20. At the ASEEES Convention on November 20, 2015, Andrea Pető participated on the panel The Red Army in Europe in 1944–1945: Encounters and Representation. Her presentation “The Process of Silencing and Un-Silencing Sexual Violence during World War II,” covered the Khaldei photo, but this time, without mentioning that the photo was taken in the ghetto, she expressed her doubt if the image represented rape since, as she stated, “it did not fit the context.”

21. Cornelius, Deborah S., Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron (New York, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Berend, Ivan T., review of “ Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron ,” by Cornelius, Deborah S., Slavic Review 71, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 678 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Deborah S. Cornelius, Kutyaszorítóban. Magyarország és a II. világháború [In a Quagmire: Hungary and World War II] (Budapest, 2015), 421.

24. Burke, Eyewitnessing, 177.

25. Brown, Callum G., Postmodernism for Historians (New York, 2005), 13 Google Scholar.

26. Evans, Richard J., In Defense of History (New York, 2000), 109 Google ScholarPubMed.

27. Almenberg, Gustaf, Notes on Participatory Art: Toward a Manifesto Differentiating It from Open Work, Interactive Art and Relational Art (Central Milton Keynes, 2010), 109 Google Scholar.

28. Stańczyk, Ewa, “Heroes, Victims, Role Models: Representing the Child Soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising,” Slavic Review 74, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 751–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Dieter De Bruyn, “Patriotism of Tomorrow? The Commemoration and Popularization of the Warsaw Rising through Comics,” 18, at https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1093984/file/6745202 (last accessed November 11, 2016).

30. Alexander and Alice Nakhomovsky, eds., Witness to History: The Photographs of Yevgeny Khaldei (New York, 1997), 51. The caption reads, “Page 51: Budapest, 1945.” The collection does not include the dead mother and daughter but it includes other ghetto photos including pictures of the dead. In a French publication only one ghetto photo was printed, the iconic “Jewish Couple,” picturing two survivors wearing the Star of David on their coats. See Grosset, Mark, Khaldei. Un photoreporter en Union Sovietique (Paris, 2004), 120–21Google Scholar.

31. In 1994 Khaldei recalled: “The Russian Army took Pest first, then Buda. The Germans marched to Buda and blew up all the bridges. At night from the light aircrafts of the Luftwaffe ammunition and food supplies were dropped to their troops.” Volland, Ernst and Krimmer, Heinz, eds., Jewgeni Chaldei: Kriegstagebuch (Berlin, 2011), 122–23Google Scholar. The mother and daughter photo is not included in this publication.

32. Markó, György, ed., Az elsodort város [The Swept Away City] (Budapest, 2005), 407 Google Scholar. Two photographs of the plane in the building are shown in this book.

33. De Bruyn, “Patriotism of Tomorrow?,” 18. Image is on p. 23.

34. De Bruyn, “Patriotism of Tomorrow?,” 20.

35. For the photo, see Grosset, Khaldei, 98.

36. The photo appears in Schnold, ed., Icons of War, 46–47; for a similar photo of Khaldei, see Grosset, Khaldei, 78.

37. Evgueni Khaldei: Photographer under Stalin. Directed by Marc-Henri Wajnberg. Chicago, IL: Home Vision Entertainment, 2001.

38. Grosset, Khaldei, 108.

39. For a manipulated photo of Khaldei showing Soviet fighter planes, see Grosset, Khaldei, 79.

40. Carr, What Is History?, 8.