Does Anyone Have Information About This Single Frame From Dresden?

[Stubble]

I ran across this single frame (negative?) of the Dresden pyres;



I am left with questions.

1) Is this a single frame from a motion picture? It does not appear to be in photo negative after all.

2) Where did it come from?

3) is there a color motion picture of pyre operation at Dresden floating around some place?

Orientation is weird, maybe it was colorized and the background was added. I don't know.

[fireofice]

According to this, we don't have good evidence on the kind of cremation process that took place just from the photos. So no, there is no video as far as I'm aware.

https://holocausthistorychannel.wordpre ... pton-farm/

[Stubble]

I believe I linked your link in the Dresden thread.

I was more asking about that single frame.

It appears to be a positive and in color, the implications for me is that this is from a reel, meaning a motion picture, although, the orientation is wrong for that.

[Wetzelrad]

Well, it's obvious from a reverse image search that effectively every instance of this image on the internet derives from David Irving's website. He has it on at least three pages, here, here, and here, all from 2004.

He credits Walther Hahn as the photographer. This is also mentioned several times in his book, Apocalypse 1945. In the notes we read this:

Walther Hahn made the photographs available to the author when he visited Dresden in 1961; he also furnished duplicates of the colour transparencies—alas, duplicated on communist East German stock, which has faded over the years. [...] On the morning after Hahn’s death a few years later the People’s Police surrounded his villa and seized his entire photographic collection ‘for the people’. The communist authorities of the Fototek (city photographic archives) marked the most gruesome negatives with a red cross, never to be published. ‘For you, Mr Irving, of course we make an exception,’ they said when the author next visited the city in 1990, before Germany’s reunification. Hahn’s original colour transparencies have vanished without a trace; the author’s duplicates alone have survived, and in 2001 he donated a set to the Fototek with the request that royalties be donated to the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche.

Since Irving always describes them as photographs I take that it was a still photo to begin with.

His book also includes this image but it is seemingly no better quality than what's on his website. Still, you might find it useful to compare it with others of Hahn's photos included in the book. (See the 2007 scan.)

Irving Books is fairly well managed now, so you could always get in contact if you have questions.

[pilgrimofdark]

Attributed to Walter Hahn by David Irving.



This is a live link to his site that works:
The 1945 air raid on Dresden

But the Wayback Machine has a whole "Dresden Gallery" that includes the photo.
Link

I wonder if higher-resolution versions were available in other years on his site.

edit: Wetzelrad found it first and on more pages! I wonder what the deal is with all of the different colorizations on Irving's website.

[Wetzelrad]

Ah, that's a nice gallery. You can tell Irving was quite irritated about all the people "pirating" his collection of photos, which is why he watermarked them all there.

[Stubble]

So, ostensibly, the one I linked is a photograph of one of the 'color transparencies' I guess, or, the film border was shopped in.

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

I did not know 'color transparencies' were a thing.

Also, thank you for the MUCH higher resolution image, it pops significantly better.

Don't get me wrong, it is a horrible picture, but, that is a much better example of it.

[Wetzelrad]

Alamy and Getty have several photos from Irving's collection, but none of them are credited to Irving or Hahn. A couple of them are in better quality, but I don't see image 0037, the one you're looking for.

However, after staring at this series for long enough, it appears that most of the photos of this event were taken of just one specific pyre, including image 0037. Here is a collage of those photos. I have taken the liberty of flipping some of these horizontally to what should be their correct orientation. I won't highlight all the features which match up across photos, but they include such things as the statue of Germania, the lamppost, the girders, the bodies themselves, the ash piles, and the ruins in the background.



Based on this I think you can get a pretty good idea of how this one particular pyre looked but very little idea as to how well it burned. At its most advanced, the pyre was the same height as before the fire was lit. I don't see any sign of gasoline.

In several cases it would be possible to make a two-frame animation, where the photos line up for it, but I won't bother unless someone thinks there is something to be learned from it.

[Stubble]

Not much to glean from them unfortunately.

[pilgrimofdark]

Here are a couple more from the book Dresden -- EIne Kamera klagt an.





From poking around books and journal articles, what I gather is that wood and straw was packed in between the bodies/layers.

The ash and charred bone were later transported for interment. So at least some info that these pyres didn't reduce bones to ash, just the soft tissue, clothing, and wood/straw.

The gap under the pyres could be for airflow, for packing in more wood, collection/clearing out ash, or something I'm not aware of.

It doesn't look like they used "fat Jewish women" as kindling consistent with the converged testimony of the A-R camps, and there are no channels built under the pyre to collect fat to drip it over the top of the pyre.

[pilgrimofdark]

But the Wayback Machine has a whole "Dresden Gallery" that includes the photo.
Link

Updated with link on his working website with all the images: Dresden gallery and Index of pages.

The Wayback Machine can be ridiculously slow.

The Deutsche Fotothek has more images of better quality from Walter Hahn, but Irving seems to be the only source for color photos that Hahn took.

[Wetzelrad]

Fototek also has the OP image, although it's in black and white and >10% of the edges are cropped off.
https://www.deutschefotothek.de/documen ... og_0314608

I'd like to move toward broader analysis. In short, the bombing of Dresden took place from February 13-15, 1945. Fredrick Taylor tells us the cremation took place "between February 21 and March 5". David Irving tells us ash was trucked away to a cemetery at the end of cremation. Walter Hahn's photos of the pyres are dated February 25. We're left with a variety of questions which are being debated in this parallel thread.

Hahn took this photo of the Altmarkt on February 18. No pyre has yet been built, but you can see a few carts holding what look to me like large wooden boxes. This could be consistent either with coffins or with what Taylor describes as ash containers, except the date is early for those.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 667801.jpg

Here is a photo by Gertrud Heinrich showing the same angle of the plaza. It's undated, but it would have to have been taken after the cremations, because more of the debris is cleared and some small wooden structures have been built on the location of a pyre. There are numerous darkened spots across the ground. Is each one the site of a pyre?
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 033946.jpg

Returning to Hahn's collection from February 25, this photo shows a smoking pyre. Take note of the foreground. On the left can be seen some straw, among the bodies. On the right can be seen a stretcher with a shovel on it, which probably indicates that carrying bodies and shovelling were tasks done by the same crew. This raises the question -- was ash being shovelled into carts and driven away already on this date? In the background on the left I see what appears to be a man carrying a long, narrow object, possibly a log or another shovel.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314630.jpg

This photo provides a good look at the pyre design. Wood and straw are visible.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314627.jpg

This photo gives an excellent look at the workers, most of whom are wearing long-sleeve gloves. Undoubtedly a hygienic measure because of the fear of disease. More long tools can be seen in the hands of workers. The truck seen here appears to have been converted to a wood-gas generator. It's possible this truck was loading up with ash or unloading wood, since one of the men in it is carrying a tool.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314628.jpg

This photo, which is flipped horizontally, shows many workers on the site of a pyre before it was fully loaded. One can be seen holding a shovel in a pile of ashes. Another has gloves which are white at the end, a possible indication that he was handling the ashes.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314624.jpg

Another photo showing a large number of workers including some with shovels. Also take note of the puddle in the foreground, presumably from rain. What would rain do to the ash piles?
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314623.jpg

This photo gives us a rare albeit poor look at the contents of two carts. One cart has a trail of straw falling out of it to the ground. The other, to my eyes, looks like it may hold wood. A nondescript fire is smoking in the background.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314625.jpg

This photo is taken at around the same moment. In this one the contents of the wagon particularly resemble cut logs of wood.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314631.jpg

Irving's collection includes a third photo of the same moment, in lower resolution but also in color. Here we see one man reaching in to remove something from the cart, and possibly a second man holding out his arms to receive it. Again, is this wood or bodies? [EDIT: There does appear to be a stretcher carrying bodies away, so this must be a load of bodies unless it was a mixed load.] Better quality photos in color could confirm or refute.
https://local.fpp.co.uk/old-web/books/D ... s/0029.jpg

This photo shows a flat object set up against the wagon wheel. Possibly this is just the hatch for the back of the wagon, but I again wonder if it isn't part of a container. It does not closely resemble the objects in the February 18 picture.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314621.jpg

One last photo, dated February 13, depicting presumed victims of the air raid. These are partially cremated bodies laid out on the street. Included is an open coffin containing one or more bodies.
https://fotothek.slub-dresden.de/fotos/ ... 314626.jpg

[pilgrimofdark]

What substantive questions regarding the Dresden pyres are currently outstanding?

That would help identify potential sources of answers.

I played around with some of the photos, flipping them to the correct orientation and colorizing them. But I'm not even sure what question that would help answer so I kind of gave up on it for now.

The debate threads can get so derailed that they're hard to follow after a certain point.

[Wetzelrad]

The primary questions are:
- How much wood was used?
- To what extent were bodies cremated? Fully to ashes and bone?
- How much wood ash and cremains were generated?

In the debate, Holocaust Believers are trying to take advantage of the gaps in the evidence from Dresden to claim not that there were fewer victims but that the process of open-air cremation should take less fuel than the laws of physics allow. It's all rather cynical. We already know how open air cremation works from many other sources including Indian funeral pyres, livestock burnings, the Yermán et al. 2018 experiment, house fires, and more. It requires a lot of fuel over a long period of time.

[pilgrimofdark]

Thanks for this. These are definite gaps in the knowledge so far.

The secondary literature (Irving, Taylor, others) doesn't seem to reference these details at all.

Other than checking other books/articles, these are the most likely guesses I have for where to find these answers.

- How much wood was used?

Dresden city archives.

This is the link to that report Irving had referenced.

https://www.archiv.sachsen.de/archiv/be ... da3b465c51

It looks like we could hire a service provider to go take photos of the document?
https://www.archiv.sachsen.de/dienstlei ... -9182.html

I've also seen it referenced in a few other works. Apparently, it's reproduced in its entirety in some German book on Dresden that isn't available online. I can't remember which book, but could track it down.

Maybe Dresden 1945. Daten - Fakten - Opfer.
Maybe Inferno Dresden.

Or maybe someone could email Irving's website and see if they can send a copy.

- To what extent were bodies cremated? Fully to ashes and bone?
- How much wood ash and cremains were generated?

Might be in the same source, or another source in the Dresden city archives.

Saxony archives, includes Dresden city:
https://www.archiv.sachsen.de/

It's also possible someone at the Heidefriedhof cemetery has documentation or information. They have a whole memorial for Dresden, so it's not like this is forgotten knowledge.

https://www.bestattungen-dresden.de/heidefriedhof.html

Gert Burgel wrote a 1,000-page memorial book on the victims of Dresden. Someone could email him for any guidance.

Website: http://www.dresden-dossier1945.de/
2020 edition of book: https://archive.org/details/memento-dre ... 4/mode/2up