Need to find photodocumentation of antisemitic incidents in W. Germany in the early '60s

August 21, 2008 11:59 AM

Help! I need to find a documentary photograph related to the wave of anti-Semitic incidents in West Germany in the early 1960s. Surely the power of the green can help?

On Christmas Eve, 1959, the Cologne synagogue was defaced with swastikas; it was the first major incident of its kind in Germany since the end of the war, and was followed by a wave of similar anti-Semitic attacks.

I urgently need to find a photo the Cologne synagogue following the attack, or any similar incidents in West Germany in the early 1960s (desecration of Jewish gravesites, etc.). An online photo is okay, but a photo published in a book would be even better.

Thanks!

posted by scody to society & culture (13 comments total)

Have you tried searching Google books? Those specific keywords might get you to a book with a photo pretty quickly.
posted by yarrow at 12:11 PM on August 21, 2008

Oh and you might try "Koln" as well as "Cologne." Sorry if I'm saying things that are obvious.
posted by yarrow at 12:12 PM on August 21, 2008

Yep, checked on google books (and used Koln as well) -- the publications that discuss it don't seem to have photographs (or don't reproduce enough of the book that I can tell whether there are photos or not). I'm hoping someone out there in AskMeLand can literally grab a book off their shelf and say, "yes, there's a pic on p. X of This Book Right Here."

I should mention that it can also be a German publication -- doesn't have to be in English.
posted by scody at 12:24 PM on August 21, 2008

Hey scody, drop MeFite arco a note. He works here and if he can't answer this question it's unanswerable.
posted by jessamyn at 12:28 PM on August 21, 2008

Could you search the online archives of a big German newspaper that would have reported the events, like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, or Süddeutsche Zeitung?
posted by mdonley at 12:37 PM on August 21, 2008

Thanks, Jessamyn! I'll do that.

mdonley -- yep, we originally got a lo-resolution digital version out of one of the German archives quite awhile ago, but they don't seem to have a hi-resolution one that's suitable for our purposes (we need to reproduce it as an illustration in a book). Our rights & reproductions dept. has gotten nowhere so far with any other archives in Germany.
posted by scody at 12:45 PM on August 21, 2008

Check with the German Historical Institute.
posted by Ironmouth at 12:46 PM on August 21, 2008

The AP multimedia archive has two photos of that synagogue from September of 1959, but nothing from December. If you can access the ap archive, take a look.
posted by gyusan at 12:47 PM on August 21, 2008

The incident was the subject of an early January TIME Magazine article, maybe there'd be a photo in there? (I was looking online, but the online version only has text.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:55 PM on August 21, 2008

These are some great leads -- danke! We'll pursue those, and if anyone has any other suggestions in the meantime, keep 'em coming.
posted by scody at 1:52 PM on August 21, 2008

Might this be something that they'd have over at the Weisenthal Center Museum of Tolerance archives/library right there in LA?
posted by jasper411 at 1:01 PM on August 22, 2008

Thanks again, everyone! I contacted arco as jess suggested, and he did some amazing research for us, locating a book in their collections that had the exact photo we wanted.
posted by scody at 2:05 PM on August 27, 2008

hooray!
posted by jessamyn at 3:18 PM on August 27, 2008