THE YOUNG MAN HANDSOME AS A PRINCE IN AUSCHWITZ: The Mysterious Death of 21-Year-Old Mendel Jaffe Just 1 Day After Arriving at the Auschwitz Death Camp – No Photo, No Grave, ONLY A SPEAKING GAZE THAT PIERCES THROUGH TIME
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This post honours the memory of a Holocaust victim.
5 December 1920 | Mendel Jaffe was born in Horten, Norway
A Norwegian Jewish boy, apprentice photographer, 21 years old when the darkness came. Full of dreams of capturing the world through his lens.
On 26 November 1942, together with 532 other Norwegian Jews (men, women, and children) on board the SS Donau, he was deported from Oslo to Auschwitz. The ship arrived on 1 December 1942.
Mendel Jaffe did not survive.
Of the 772 Norwegian Jews deported to Auschwitz, only 34 returned. Mendel was one of the 738 who never came home.
We remember Mendel Jaffe today not to dwell in sorrow, but to return to him the name and future that were stolen; to honour the 738 Norwegian Jews murdered in the Holocaust; and to ensure that every young man who once looked at the world through a camera lens is never reduced to just a number.
He was 21. He wanted to photograph life. They took everything except his name. We give it back to him, forever.
Sources
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum – Transport from Norway, 26 November 1942
Norwegian Centre for Holocaust and Minority Studies – deportation lists
Yad Vashem – Page of Testimony submitted by family
