This publication is featured on PiE in conjunction with the exhibition Stefan Hanke “KZ überlebt” by Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus Berlin.

For Stefan Hanke (born 1961 in Regensburg), each new day held the risk of missing the chance to meet one less person who had survived one of the greatest catastrophes in human history, one that has ever occurred in Europe. For nearly eleven years, the photographer traveled thousands of kilometers for his project, seeking to meet the last survivors of the Nazi concentration camps.

These intense encounters resulted in photographs that offer us a profoundly reflective glimpse into history. Hanke met the Polish writer Zofia Posmysz the morning after she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in a barracks of the former women’s camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He photographed Pavel Stránský from Prague in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where, from 1945 to 1949, the leading figures of the Nazi regime were tried. Hanke’s photographs are not mere documentation, but rather interpretations of these moving encounters.