The Cold Eye. Final Pictures of Jewish Families from the Tarnów Ghetto

In late 1941, two Viennese scholars developed a project “to research typical Eastern European Jews.” The following March, using the “cold eye of science,” they took photographs of more than a hundred Jewish families – 565 men, women and children – in the German-occupied Polish city of Tarnów. Only 26 of these people were able to survive the Holocaust and recount what happened. Pictures and brief biographies of those murdered have been preserved.

This exhibition documents the work carried out by the two scholars while also depicting the lives of Jews in Tarnów before 1939 and their murder under German occupation. This story is typical of how hundreds of Jewish communities were persecuted and destroyed in the parts of Poland under German rule and terror.

Project Director: Natural History Museum Vienna, Dr. Margit Berner, Prof. Dr. Sabine Eggers. Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Uwe Neumärker. Topography of Terror Foundation, Prof. Dr. Andreas Nachama, Dr. Andrea Riedle / Curators: Dr. Götz Aly, Dr. Ulrich Baumann, Dr. Margit Berner, Dr. Stephanie Bohra / Historical consultants: Dr. Götz Aly, Agnieszka Wierzcholska / Project coordination: Dr. Stephanie Bohra / Additional historical research: Dr. Aliaksandr Dalhouski, PD Dr. Edith Raim, Henri Rösch, Laura Stöbener,
Merle Stöver, Agnieszka Wierzcholska / Image Management: Stefan Auch, Laura Stöbener, Merle Stöver /  Editing german: Dr. Götz Aly, Prof. Dr. Sabine Eggers, Uwe Neumärker, Dr. Andrea Riedle / Translations (english): Dr. Jefferson Chase / Editing english: Adam Schonfeld / Accompanying program: Dr. Erika Bucholtz, Peter Eckel / Public relations: Kay-Uwe von Damaros / Exhibition design and Graphics: Christine Kitta / Exhibition architecture: Franke|Steinert GmbH / Digitalization and Printing (Anthropometric photos), Cover photo, Object photography: Wolfgang Reichmann / Exhibition construction: D4 Projekt GmbH / IT, Media Presentation: GRAPHSCAPE GmbH