Glance at Culture - Dr. Christoph Kreutzmüller and Katharina Menschick Discussing the #lastseen Project's Analysis of Nazi Deportation Photographs

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To learn more, please visit the website for the #lastseen project.

SHOW NOTES:

0:00 Katharina Menschick on the response to #lastseen project

3:00 Menschick – research associate in Arolsen Archives’ historical research department dealing with digital memory projects, digital archival projects and archival theory

3:20 Dr. Christoph Kreutzmüller – historian with Arolsen Archives and House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin

3:45 mission of the #lastseen initiative

5:00 missing deportation photographs 

6:00 deportation photographs found by American GI and returned during Nuremberg trials

7:00 request for deportation photographs

7:20 types of deportation photographs 

8:30 Eisenach deportation – Magda Katz 

9:00 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum research – donor identified uncle in photograph 

11:15 deportation from Dr. Kreutzmüller’s hometown

12:30 questions about why photographers took the deportation photos

13:00 spectatorship / audience of the photographs

14:20 importance of photographs as a historical source

14:45 virtual interactive educational resource

16:45 German high school pupils’ assistance in developing educational resource

18:10 difficulty of discussing bystanders 

19:30 photographs invite reflection 

22:00 historical transparency by telling what they don’t know 

25:00 giving context to photographs 

28:30 gaze of those photographed

29:15 propaganda film in Warsaw Ghetto

30:20 legacy of their work 

32:15 definition of justice – striving for fairness

33:00 real restoration cannot be achieved

34:00 doing justice to the photographs and to those in the photographs

34:45 restitution through archives 

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Music by Toulme.

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© Stephanie Drawdy [2026]