Nuremberg

Starting on January 25, 2026, the DB Museum Nuremberg will be showing a small exhibition on the so-called Auschwitz Album. It is considered the only surviving photographic evidence of the mass murder carried out by the Nazi regime at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The photos were taken by members of the SS in 1944 and show with shocking clarity the arrival of deported Jewish people from Hungary at the infamous ramp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is unclear why the album was created.

By chance, the album was found by Jewish prisoner Lilly Jacob in an abandoned SS guard quarters after the liberation of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in 1945 and preserved for posterity. It comprises 56 pages with 193 photos. The album served as important evidence in the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. In 1980, Lilly Jacob handed the album over to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. In 1999, it was digitized; the memorial's exhibition department used the material to create a small exhibition, which is also available online.

At Yad Vashem, a memorial commemorates the millions of Jews who were transported from all over Europe to extermination camps under inhumane conditions. In most cases, death awaited them there. In 2024, the memorial was restored, its central element being an original covered Reichsbahn freight car. Deutsche Bahn, which supported the restoration project, and the Yad Vashem memorial took the restoration as an opportunity to prepare material from the Auschwitz Album for a small exhibition at the DB Academy in Potsdam. This is now moving to the DB Museum, supplemented by a film documenting the restoration of the memorial.

The exhibition will be on display at the DB Museum from January 25 to April 26, 2026.
To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the museum is offering two free guided tours (at 1 pm and 2 pm) on Sunday, January 25, 2026. Starting on February 8, there will also be a free tour every Sunday (1:30 pm).