Public Program United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Shortly after World War II, an American intelligence officer living in Germany made a surprising discovery—a personal album of photographs chronicling SS officers’ activities at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Taken between May and December 1944, these rare images of Nazis singing, hunting, and even trimming a Christmas tree provide a chilling contrast to the photographs of the thousands of Hungarian Jews who were sent to Auschwitz in the same period.