Who was Alberto Errera? A Greek Jew, a naval officer, prisoner no.18 25 52 in Auschwitz and ─ unquestionably ─ a resistance fighter, a fearless hero.

80 years ago, in late July 1944, Alberto Errera managed to get hold of a camera and use it near the gas chambers and crematoria nos. 4 and 5 in Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. With the help and support of his fellow prisoners in the Sonderkommando (special unit), Errera managed to secretly photograph the burning of murdered Jewish people.

To this day his photographs are still the only photographic documentation of the Holocaust. Polish prisoners and members of the Polish resistance ensured that the photographs were smuggled out of the camp and preserved as evidence for all time. Alberto Errera was killed in early August 1944. He was shot while trying to escape from the camp. He was 31 years old.

Deeply moved and fiercely challenged by the horror and the reality of Alberto Errera’s photographs, the artist Gerhard Richter was inspired to create his Birkenau Series in 2014. An edition of these pictures and copies of Alberto Errera's photographs can be found today in the Gerhard Richter Birkenau Exhibition Hall near the International Youth Meeting Center in Oswiecim. They can be seen as a mark of gratitude and a tribute to the courage of Alberto Errera and his fellow prisoners:

"Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human." (Gerhard Richter)

Opening of the Gerhard Richter Museum Birkenau in Oświęcim