From "Euthanasia" to Sobibor

"An unforgettable look at genocide as seen by its perpetrators. Johann Niemann's albums document his career from SS man at Grafeneck, burning the bodies of people deemed "unworthy of life," to Deputy Commandant of Sobibor, where he directed the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews. The photos show him as he wanted to see himself – impeccably groomed, relaxed, and powerful – but the superb interpretative chapters reveal the systemic and colossal brutality of which he was both a product and a proponent."—Doris L. Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto; author of War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

"From "Euthanasia" to Sobibor presents an amazingly extensive collection of recently-discovered photographs that had been collected by SS-officer Johann Niemann, whose rose from obscurity to become the Deputy Commandant of Sobibor and was executed in the October 1943 prisoner uprising and breakout. These photographs illustrate a lethal career that saw Niemann serve in four "euthanasia" centers created by the Nazi regime to murder the German handicapped as well as in the death camps of Belzec and Sobibor. Alongside the photographs are chapters that summarize cutting-edge scholarship on a number of relevant topics but especially on the German personnel who staffed these camps and the East European auxiliaries who guarded them."—Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"This remarkable and meticulously researched volume presents one of the most significant private perpetrator photo collections to survive. For unraveling the horrible conundrum of human participation in genocide, the collection is an essential source, both revealing and impenetrable in one."—Mark Roseman, Distinguished Professor of History, Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, Indiana University

"With stunning clarity, the editors bring to light the lessor known experiences of those associated with the Operation Reinhard death camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. In publishing Niemann's photo collection, the editors are informing a broad audience of Germany's systematic murder of medically institutionalized patients within Germany and the attempted extermination of European Jews at the Operation Reinhard death camps."—Darren Johnson, United States Military Academy at West Point, H-Net