Eric Schwab documented the horror of the Nazi extermination camps in 1945
As the Allies liberated German death camps, a Jewish photographer followed course in search for his mother
Piles of skeletal bodies, the doors to a crematorium, emaciated faces -- photographer Eric Schwab documents the full horror of the Nazi extermination camps in the spring of 1945, as he searches for his deported mother.
One-time fashion photographer and having escaped as a prisoner from a train bound for Germany, later joining the Resistance, Eric Schwab was one of the first photographers to work for AFP after it was refounded in August 1944 in a liberated Paris.
As a war correspondent, he follows the Allied troops as they advance, becoming a witness to the horrors discovered as the forces progressively liberate the German death camps.
A painful quest to find his mother drives him. Elsbeth, a Jewish German, was deported in 1943. Since then, he has not heard anything.
One of Schwab's first published photographs is of the entrance gate to Buchenwald, bearing the terrible inscription "Jedem das Seine" ("To each what he deserves").
At Dachau, another concentration camp, Schwab takes portraits that lay bare the inhumanity suffered. He photographs the number tattooed on the bone-thin arm of a Jewish prisoner.
Schwab's journey takes him to the camp at Terezin (Theresienstadt), in what is today the Czech Republic. A few days from the end of the war, the region is in chaos as vast numbers flee advancing Soviet troops towards US-controlled territory.
Here, the photographer's dream comes true. In May 1945, he discovers a frail woman with white hair, wearing a nurse's cap: his mother.
Then aged 56, Elsbeth has managed to escape death and has been looking after child survivors at the camp. It is, naturally, an intensely emotional reunion but it appears that, out of respect, he refrains from photographing his mother, or at least from publishing the images.
After the war, Eric Schwab and his mother left France, settling in New York in 1946.