Funeral in Berlin

 In 1964 werd de wereld verblijd met Goldfinger, en het jaar nadien met Funeral in Berlin. Op de affiches van deze fims treffen we twee gemeenschappelijke namen aan: producent Harry Saltzman en regisseur Guy Hamilton.

Het verschil tussen beide films is niettemin zeer groot. Goldfinger is (met alle respect voor Sean Connery) een redelijk onbenullig James Bond-vehikel zoals er nog vele zouden volgen, maar Funeral in Berlin behoort tot het beste in het Koude Oorlog-genre, met een intelligente plot en uitstekend acteerwerk. Hieronder het verhaal, (chrono)logisch geordend, zoals men het als kijker maar geleidelijk aan ontrafelt. De locatie is het Berlijn van de jaren '60, met de muur nog maar pas opgetrokken. De sfeer in de stad, perfect opgeroepen, behoort tot de sterke punten van de film.

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Kolonel Ross (Britse geheime dienst)

De figuur om wie alles draait is de ex-nazi Paul Louis Broum, die na de oorlog de identiteit van de verzetsman Johnny Vulcan overgenomen heeft. Hij is in Berlijn actief namens de Britse geheime dienst, die zijn echte identiteitspapieren bezit en hem daarmee in haar macht heeft.

Rechts: Broum alias Vulcan. Links: Hallam (Britse geheime dienst)

Hij wil in een Zwitsere bank oorlogsgeld gaan ophalen, maar heeft daarvoor zijn authentieke identiteitspapieren nodig. Hij laat Londen weten dat de Russische kolonel Stok, die baas over de Berlijnse muur is, wil overlopen, en dat dit moet gebeuren door de professionele mensensmokkelaar Kreutzmann. (Dit is een valstrik van Stok om Kreutzmann uit te schakelen. In de film is dit eigenlijk een zijverhaal.) Broum laat, als onderdeel van de prijs voor het overlopen, in Londen zijn echte papieren vragen, beheerd door Hallam. Ook een Israelische groep in Berlijn is op zoek naar Broum om het Zwitserse geld te recupereren.

De Israelische groep

Kolonel Ross stuurt Harry Palmer naar Berlijn om het zaakje na te trekken. Broum brengt Palmer in contact met Kreutzmann, en de Israeli's pappen zelf aan met Palmer.

Palmer met kolonel Stok

Links: Kreutzmann; rechts: Palmer.

Het overbrengen van Stok naar het Westen gebeurt via een nep-begrafenis (de begrafenis uit de titel), die echter het lijk van Kreutzmann oplevert en niet de Russische kolonel. Palmer laat zich de papieren van Broum afhandig maken, maar hij had die al vervangen door een copie.

Broum krijgt de medewerking van Hallam, die wegens een dreigend ontslag samen met Broum het geld wil ophalen en naar het Oostblok verdwijnen. Uiteindelijk komen Broum en Hallam om het leven tijdens hun ontsnappingspoging, en de Israeli's krijgen van Palmer de echte identiteitspapieren.

*

Artistieke wiskunde, opus X — Ringoppervlak in zeven kleuren

 In 1968 bewezen Ringel and Youngs het z.g. Vermoeden van Heawood (zie hier), en als bijzonder geval volgt daaruit dat zeven kleuren nodig en voldoende zijn om elke kaart op een ringoppervlak (torus) in te kleuren. Opus X "toont" (in abstracte zin) een torus met daarop een kaart waarvoor inderdaad zeven kleuren nodig zijn. 

De vlakke afbeelding is een vierkant, waarbij aan elke zijde lipjes en uitsparingen zijn aangebracht die suggereren hoe men dit vierkant door twee keer te plooien tot een torus zou kunnen omvormen. Met een rechthoek uit stijf materiaal (papier, bijvoorbeeld) zal dat nooit lukken. Om dat in te zien bekijken we de onderstaande rechthoek, met blauwe en groene zijden en een rode as van symmetrie. Door de blauwe zijden naar achteren om te plooien en samen te voegen ontstaat een open cilinder met een rode en een blauwe evenaar, en twee groene cirkels in de zijvlakken. 

Van bovenaf bekeken zien we die open cilinder als een rechthoek met een blauwe en een rode lange zijde, en korte groene zijden (onderaan links):

Proberen we nu de groene zijvlakken samen te voegen tot een ring (die we eveneens van bovenaf bekijken, bovenstaande figuur rechts), dan blijkt snel dat dit intrinsiek onmogelijk is: de blauwe evenaar moet ingedrukt worden en de rode evenaar uitgerekt. De praktische uitvoering van die bewerking vereist dus elastisch materiaal, en dat is hier volkomen ad rem, want de eigenschap die we hier bekijken is topologisch van aard, en wordt topologie niet omschreven als meetkunde op rubber? De eigenschap geldt namelijk niet alleen voor een torus, maar voor gelijk welk oppervlak met juist één gat.

Opus X is dus niets méér dan een wiskundige suggestie ter attentie van Marsbewoners en andere intelligente wezens, om toe te lichten hoe de driedimensionale versie in het echt eruit ziet. Hieronder een 3D- animatie, van het internet geplukt.

In de tussenfase hieronder getoond

valt op hoe moeilijk het is, te aanvaarden dat de gele parallellogrammen vertikaal gealigneerd zijn, allebei in het middelste derde van het doek. Eveneens ontstaat de indruk dat het groene parallellogram breder is dan zijn rode of oranje buren. 

Als de torus eenmaal toegerold is, sluiten de twee stukken geel aaneen tot één groot geel stuk, en evenzo de twee stukken paars, de twee stukken zwart en de drie stukken blauw. Dat ziet men gemakkelijk in als men een copie van het vierkant tegen de vier zijden aanplakt, want dan ziet men de afgesneden stukken gewoon doorlopen:

De verdeling is zo gekozen dat elke kleur in de vlakke figuur dezelfde oppervlakte krijgt, een eigenschap die in de rubberen uitvoering uiteraard verloren gaat door de vervormingen.

Als we uitgaan van een vierkant met zijde 1, dan krijgt elke kleur dus 1/7 van de oppervlakte. De volledige parallellogrammen (oranje, rood, groen) hebben een zijde van 1/3 en dus een hoogte van 3/7. Hieruit volgen de hoogten van geel: 1/7 onderaan, 2/7 bovenaan. Hieruit op zijn beurt de hoogten van blauw: 2/7 onderaan, 1/7 bovenaan. Purper en zwart verdelen dan onder elkaar de overblijvende hoogte van 6/7.

De concrete uitvoering:

*

Julia Roberts' raadselachtige Pelikaanpetitum

The Pelican Brief dateert van 1993. De eerste vraag die zich opdringt: wat is in het Engels een brief? In de Nederlandse ondertitels heeft men het systematisch over een petitum, maar met dit Latijnse woord zijn we natuurlijk geen stap verder. Het woordenboek moet ons ter hulp komen.

In Oxford English Dictionary vinden we onder brief:

7.a. Law. A summary of the facts of a case, with reference to the points of law supposed to be applicable to them, drawn up for the instruction of counsel conducting the case in court.

en online heb ik nog gevonden voor petitum

procesrecht - Latijn: beknopte samenvatting. Onderdeel van de dagvaarding of de memorie van eis, waarin staat wat de eiser nu precies van gedaagde vordert. 

Helemaal kloppen doet het niet, want dit "Nederlandse" petitum wordt door diezelfde bron in het Engels vertaald als conclusion, niet brief.

Voor de burgerman had dus in de ondertitels gewoon résumé of samenvatting mogen staan in plaats van het duistere Latijn petitum.

Om ook de pelikanen uit de titel erin te betrekken moeten we het verhaal van de film (chrono)logisch blootgeven. (Wij inspireren ons op de Engelse samenvatting hier.)

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Victor Mattiece (waarvan in de film enkel een foto getoond wordt) is een olie- en gasmagnaat, die zijn oog heeft laten vallen op een natuurgebied bewoond door pelikanen. Hij is in een proces gewikkeld met milieu-activisten, en wenst alvast het Hoog Gerechtshof op zijn hand te krijgen. Daartoe schakelt hij de huurmoordenaar Khamel in, die met een wisselend uiterlijk alle ongewenste personen uitschakelt. Een van de advocaten van Mattiece, Edwin Sneller, dient als contacpersoon.

De eerste slachtoffers zijn twee opperrechters (de ene ziek en hoogbejaard, de andere homo) die allebei bekend staan om hun consequent vasthouden aan milieubehoud. Mattiece is persoonlijk bevriend met de president, waarvan hij de voornaamste geldschieter is, en kan er dus voor zorgen dat de twee vervangen worden door nieuwe opperrechters die in zijn voordeel zullen oordelen. 

De heldin van de film is Darby Shaw, vertolkt door Julia Roberts, 24 jaar, in heel de film duur gekleed maar hieronder helaas in négligé voor het slapengaan 

Zij is een studente in de rechten die uitpluist wat de twee vermoorde rechters gemeen hebben, en vindt op die manier het verband tussen Mattiece, de president, en de moorden. Zij legt haar bevindingen vast in een Résumé (a.k.a. Brief of Petitum), dat zij eerst voorlegt aan haar professor-annex-minnaar. Die spreekt erover met zijn vriend Verheek 

die bij het FBI werkt, en zo gaat het Résumé van hand tot hand in Washington, tot in het Witte Huis. Mattiece laat iedereen uit de weg ruimen die het in handen gekregen heeft. Het eerste slachtoffer is de professor-minnaar  

maar Darby zelf ontkomt toevallig. In de nasleep van de aanslag duikt voor het eerst "Rupert" op, een CIA-man die de opdracht heeft Darby te volgen en te beschermen. Hij zal later Khamel doodschieten op het moment dat die Darby wil uitschakelen.

In zijn juridische strijd heeft Mattiece vele advocatenkantoren ingeschakeld, met als topschurk de genaamde Marty Velmano

De integere jurist Curtis Morgan krijgt toevallig een notitie onder ogen waarin Velmano aan een andere jurist van de firma laat weten dat de twee opperrechters "met pensioen" zijn. Hij bergt een kopie daarvan  in een kluis, en zoekt onder de schuilnaam "Garcia" aarzelend contact met de journalist Gray Grantham. Het gezamenlijk speurwerk van de briljante studente en de briljante journalist (beide op de affiche hierboven) leidt naar het kluisje van de (ondertussen ook vermoorde) "Garcia" dat ook nog een getuigenis op video bevat. De president,

 een zwakke figuur die gedomineerd wordt door zijn kabinetschef Fletcher Coal,

 krijgt het lastig doordat hij FBI-baas Voyles 

gesuggereerd had die zaak wat te laten rusten. Hij zal niet meer de kans hebben nieuwe opperrechters te benoemen. Zijn kabinetschef neemt ontslag.

*

The Polish Resistance photographs from Birkenau (4)

   (Continuation of part 3. The first part, where the abbreviations and references are given, is here.) 

The second set of photographs

There seems to be no evidence that the rollfilms urgently requested on 4.IX.1944 were ever delivered and, if so, if and how they were used. There has been a second shipment of photographs though. They were part of a secret message that left the camp on 20.XI.1944 (Polish text of Kassiber Nr 198 here, from [G]). The message from SK to TL deals with numerous unrelated items, and includes the single sentence

4) The photographs are from Auschwitz, except for the album – from the Lodz ghetto

With the message came a photo album, found on the unloading ramp, and three separate photographs. The former need not concern us here, because the photographs were taken earlier and not in Auschwitz. Unlike the previous shipment, the separate photographs now seem to be actual prints, processed within the camp. (Unless the receiver printed them outside the camp, and PMO acquired the prints afterwards.) In the archives of PMO we find them in this order:

APMA-B, Mat. RO, t. III, k.27
(Anton Brose of the Politische Abteilung)

APMA-B, Mat. RO, t. III, k.28
(a barack of "horse stable" type under construction in Birkenau)

APMA-B, Mat. RO, t. III, k.29
(SS-driver Johann Roth)

Evidently, #27 and #29 are official photographs of SS personnel, clandestinely obtained but certainly not clandestinely shot. Brose and Roth had played a major role in foiling a recent attempt to escape, but this does not explain why their photographs were smuggled out. The same question holds for #28. 

It is not clear why this was thought to be worth the risk of printing and smuggling out. Three prisoners are seen working on a typical barack, and intrinsically there is little difference with other preserved photographs showing prisoners casually at work. Maybe the shed played some role in the foiled escape, but even so: why send the picture after the attempt had failed? 

According to PMO, the photograph shown above is 55 mm x 30 mm, the paper sheet itself being 90 mm x 65 mm. 

*

The Polish Resistance photographs from Birkenau (3)

(Continuation of part  2. The first part, where the abbreviations and references are given, is here.) 

3. The content of the photographs

A cropped and heavily retouched version of

#282a + #282

is shown here. The accompanying text starts with the sentence

Among the millions of photographs that are related to Nazi death camps, only four depict the actual process of mass killing perpetrated at the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau. 

In fact, this standard interpretation relies on human testimonies, which provide the framework of what we see. Now human memory is very unreliable indeed, even with people in good faith. Specifically about these photographs: the testimonies passed down on this matter are highly contradictory (sehr widersprüchlich) and some that used to be taken seriously are since long untenable (längst nicht mehr haltbar) [K]. The only sound thing to do, therefore, is to disregard the testimonies altogether. After that, one is left with two photographically registered scenes in which criminal activity is far from evident. Needless to say, "absence of proof" is not "proof of absence".

The location of the first scene can be determined with relative certainty thanks to the combination of trees and a chimney (low in the image, right of the tree). Inspecting maps of the camp, one is inevitably led to the location of Crematorium V, which was completed in April 1943. There can be no doubt that the women are moving away from the building. Pressac was the first to notice this, but everybody can see for himself: the chimney, visible in the uncropped photograph, is behind their backs. Pressac adds: 

The photo was taken against the light, the south being in front of the photographer and the north behind him, with one of the two chimneys of a type IV/V Krematorium visible on the right. [P, p.424]

This may have been too crude a deduction, perhaps based on a print that was too coarse. In our image above, the woman most sharply printed has the upper right part of her body illuminated, while the shadow of her head falls on her left shoulder. The sun must have been high in the sky, i.e., roughly in the south, and the women must be heading roughly to the southeast. A sketch taking these various elements into account might look as follows. (Correctness, let alone accuracy, is not claimed.)

K IV= Crematorium IV with the pond east of it;
K V= Crematorium V;
Between these: the Ringstrasse, a part of the camp road.
Added in red, from top to bottom:
the two chimneys of K V,
the location of the activity involving buckets,
the women and their general direction,
the photographer and his line of sight.
 
  

In this reconstruction, the women seem to be heading for the camp road. Columns of naked women passing along the camp road from or to a far destination were not all that exceptional. The following quotation is by a female inmate of Birkenau.

The official attitude of the camp authorities in matters of public decency was contradictory, as in most other matters. Once the head wardress saw from a distance of 200 yards that a girl sitting in front of our hut had drawn her dress up above her knees, and was highly incensed. On the following day a great number of women walked naked across the camp road to the disinfection hut, past male prisoners and S.S. men who were repairing roofs, and nobody objected. [LR, p.26]

In the unpublished German typescript, on which the English translation is based, the last sentence of the quotation is

Am nächsten Tag gingen zahllose Frauen nackt über die Lagerstrasse zur Desinfektion, vorbei an männlichen Häftlingen und SS Männern, die gerade die Dächer reparierten, und es störte keinen Menschen.

During general delousings, such as happened in the summer of 1943, prisoners were even naked all day, and were marched to several successive destinations in that condition.

Strangely enough, among the conflicting testimonies (not considered here) there is one by a prisoner who claims to have made the photographs while repairing the roof of Crematorium V. Anyhow, whatever the destination of the women, in the photograph nobody hurries, no guards are to be seen, only male inmates busy, very casually, with buckets. So yes, the short caption 

Poland. Women naked, before their execution [here] 

may be perfectly true, but this photograph offers, by itself, no compelling evidence for that. 

*

The scene with the burning corpses occurred after the one with the naked women, but without testimonies we cannot know with what delay. Burning corpses is not a criminal act, neither in a crematorium nor in the open air. Moreover, Pressac (while being mistaken about the chronology of the photographs) writes 

One of the open-air cremation ditches was therefore operating quite close to the north side of Krematorium V while its furnace was not working, so that contrary to the testimony of Sonderkommando men, the ditches were not in addition to the furnace but were dug to replace it, as it was out of service. [P, p. 424]

If the crematorium was out of order, the open air incineration need not prove that the crematoria "could not cope" at the time. Yes, Cyrankiewicz had written so in his message of 4.IX.1944, but he had written the same, almost in identical terms, more than a year earlier, speaking then of Polish (not jewish) transports. Note in passing that  Pressac, like other commentators, takes the pyres described by Cyrankiewicz to be ditches. 

(continued and concluded here)

The Polish Resistance photographs from Birkenau (2)

(Continuation of part 1, where the abbreviations and references are given.)

Part 2: the physical photographs

Confusing information continues to circulate, up to this day, concerning the Polish Resistance photographs. Useful, if incomplete, information is provided in [P, p. 422-424]. Our summary would be as follows.

(a) the undeveloped film smuggled out on 6.IX.1944 contained four negatives of which the receiver thought they would be relevant. 

(b) he made contact prints of the four negatives, and a second set of contact prints for three of them, resulting in a set of seven positive contact prints.

(c) dismissing one of the negatives as a failed photo without importance, he made enlargements of the other three, cropping the images to what he thought was relevant.

(d) in due time, PMO acquired first the three enlargements described in (c), and later the seven contact prints described in (b). The original negatives are considered lost.

Confusingly, PMO has labeled both the enlargements described in (c) and the contact prints described in (b) as "negatives", though none of the ten items is a negative. The numbers added to the word "negative" are 277-279 for the enlargements and 280-283 for the contact prints, see below for the exact labels.

The three enlargements

PMO negative 277 [BSC, p.185]

PMO negative 278 [BSC, p.185]

PMO negative 279 [BSC, p.184]

The seven contact prints

The set of seven, with the right labels and references, is available on the internet (here), and we reproduce them below.

PMO negative 280

PMO negative 281

PMO negative 281a

PMO negative 282

PMO negative 282a

PMO negative 283

PMO negative 283a

There is an irregular band of light bordering the negatives. Additionally, a transparent dark band is visible along the lower edges. Photographers are well acquainted with such light leak artifacts along the edges in roll films. 

Apparently, three of the negatives were given a second contact print (281a, 282a, 283a) in an attempt to improve their quality. The following differences can be noticed. 

• In 281a the overlap along the left edge is wider, and the dark band along the lower edge is narrower than in 281.
• In 282a the prominent fold from 282 has disappeared.
• In 283a the "vertical" twig in the centre, interrupted in 283, is completely visible but grey shadows in the dark zone have disappeared. 

Adding to the confusion, different authors have used labels different from the above. Pressac, writing in 1989, was unaware of the second set of prints, and his "negative 282" is in fact 282a. Others, too, have dropped the "a" in one or several of their labels, and/or used 278-277 instead of 280-281a. One should be aware of this when consulting any of our references.

The transparent photo corners of the series given above are lacking everywhere except for two in [LC]. The photo corners left aside, it's rare to find the photographs not subjected to some extra modification. The rotation, often applied to 283, is entirely trivial but the universal habit of cropping may, and generally does, remove information that was present in the clumsy contact prints. 

*

A contact print is made in a darkroom by placing the negative on a larger sheet of photographic paper and then exposing the whole. This results in a technical photograph of sloppy composition, consisting of the negative turned positive, on a background sheet turned black. Our items 280 up to 283a are colour photographs, given the traces of blue ink, and they show the actual contact prints held in transparant photo corners. These corners have sides of approximately 1 cm. (I measured a vintage one of 9 mm and a brand new one of 11 mm.) This allows one to determine the absolute sizes of the negative and of the sheet of blackened paper. A superficial glance at, for instance, #282a reveals that the negative is square, some 6 cm x 6 cm. The film, therefore, must have been exactly 6 cm high.

Vintage roll-film 120 (also manufactured by Agfa).
Note the wooden core of the left spool.

I had my Mac do some precision measuring on a keynote slide with #282a in it. It turned out that, if the film is 6 cm high, the sheet of blackened photographic paper is 6,5 cm x 9,5 cm. The actual exposed image is 56 mm x 56 mm, which means there is a border of 2 mm on four sides. The 6 x 6 format of the photographs had been mentioned in 2001 by [C, p.86 and 87] and [DH2001, p.236, note 109].  

Vintage 6,5 x 9,5 photographic paper (also manufactured by Agfa).
 

The photographs in "portrait" mode, #280 and #281, placed side by side, cover exactly the "landscape" photograph #282a, see below (the guidelines give the boundaries of #282a).

Hence, the "portrait mode" prints are perfect halves of a 6,5 cm x 9,5 cm sheet. They have only survived in a cropped form, but the original negatives were square like the others.

Most fortunately, #281(a) exhibits, on the left side, an overlap with #282(a). Their perfect aligment proves that they are on a continuous strip of film, and are not two separate negatives that have been manually or accidentally placed so. Allowing for a border of 2 mm on each side, the strip with the two successive negatives must have been as follows:

The grey looking vertical strip left of the center is where both prints (perfectly) overlap. We have uniformly filled #281 with black, though it is not impossible that in the right portion of it some details may have been visible before the crop. Thus in #280 we do (partially) see a bright "something" situated left and above the bright quadrangle. (In 2009, Pieter Kuiper reconstructed the film strip with all 4 negatives, see here.)

Assuming that the negatives have been correctly placed on the photographic paper, i.e., with the exposed side up, #282 was taken before #281. But it cannot be altogether excluded that they were accidentally mirrored. Anyhow, #280 and #281 must have been contiguous. It seems natural to make the "failed photo" #283 contiguous with #282, but strictly speaking we cannot be sure where it was on a film that stops left of #282. Also, there are no films with room for only four photographs. Where have the others gone? Even if they were trivial family shots by the previous owner of the camera, they might have conveyed some information that the Poles must have wanted to leave the camp. After all, on 20.XI.1944 they smuggled out a complete photo album from Lodz which had been abandoned on the unloading platform. [G, No.198]   

The PMO website (here) displays three of the prints, namely

When asked about the dimensions of these photographs, Dr. Wojciech Płosa, Head of Archive at PMO, confirmed that these were (apart from the lettering) the actual photographs taken in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, originals that are kept in our archival collection size 6 cm x 9 cm. Strange, because the last two photographs evidently have different aspect ratios, none of which is 2:3. When the third PMO-photograph is given its correct square form, we obtain this:

Notice the stain, low in the right border. As #282a does not have that stain, we're not just looking at another crop. Is this yet another contact print? Inspecting the numerous reproductions of the Polish Resistance Photographs one notices many such variants. Below we reproduce Pressac's version of 281(a)  (which has, high in the bright quadrangle, a faint blue stamp by PMO) alongside 281a. 

The left contact print has been considerably "embellished" by cropping, with the heavy crack nevertheless preserved. The right one has lost the loose part altogether and partially overlaps with the preceding negative. Pressac must have been unaware of the uncropped version; otherwise, he would have deduced the correct chronology of the pictures from the overlapping negatives. Now he's mistaken about the chronology.

282+282a

As far as I could find out, PMO-Negative #282, looked upon as a failed version of #282a, has been nowhere reproduced except here. The negative had a fold when it was placed on the photographic paper, which resulted in large portions being blurred. But the non-blurred part of #282 is more revealing than its counterpart in #282a. Below are two corresponding parts from #282 (top) and #282a (bottom).

detail from #282

detail from #282a

The shadow in #282 strongly suggests the outline of a normally dressed inmate, carrying a bucket, passing in front of the tree. In #282a the man (if that's what it is) has been absorbed by the dark mass of the tree, while only his protruding bucket remains visible. Once you pay attention to it, the "floating bucket" in #282a is a very strange object indeed. 

If we place a rectangle from #282 on top of #282a, deliberately leaving the boundaries recognisable, we obtain the following:  

#282a + #282

This combination must be closer to the original photograph than each of the prints separately. Notice that, if we do see a man with a bucket in the foreground, he has several colleagues active in the background. They are clearly distinguishable in the cropped enlargement 279:

Unfortunately, the foreground tree and the floating bucket have not been preserved in this enlargement. And to say that, for many years, the photograph was only known in this cropped version! Moreover, it has been the subject of different, often crude, retouchments. In 1989, Pressac wrote that three different versions were known to him. [P, p.423]

283+283a

Combining 283 (deliberately somewhat overexposed) and 283a, and rotating the whole in such a way that the dark band along the lower edge of the negative is now on the left side, we obtain this:

#283+#283a

For comparison, place #283+#283a alongside #282+#282a, and rotate each in such a way that the tree in the latter and the dark mass in the former are more or less vertical.

The regions roughly delimited in red and blue in both images could be views of the same. The perspective is evidently different because the right image was obtained with the camera closer to the tree and aiming more or less vertically instead of more ore less horizontally. It's difficult to compare the grey shadows in front of the tree, because, unlike the trees and the sky, they may be left by humans who were not static between the two shots. In both cases, these may also be artifacts and nothing more. If our reconstruction is correct, negative #283 was produced first, followed by #282 with the camera tilted 90° between the two shots. Later #281 and #280, in that order, followed.

The film and the camera

So the Polish resistance members in Auschwitz had a camera that produced square negatives 6 cm x 6 cm, yet asked for iron rolls of film for a photographic camera 6x9. To a photographic layman like myself, the conflicting formats (6 x 6 versus 6 x 9) are puzzling. Mr. Jost Simon, Experte für Fototechnik und Historie at Foto-Museum Uhingen was so kind as to clarify things and to provide the appropriate photographs. 

• There are two films of size 6 cm: the one called 120 film had a wooden axle, and the later 620 film had a thinner metal axle allowing slimmer cameras. The disadvantage was a much thighter wound film which led to problems with the flatness of the film during exposition. Informally, both were called film for 6x9. Depending on the camera, the negatives were 6x6 or 6x9.
• The metal spool film requested in the Kassiber could only have been a Kodak 620 film, as nobody else used this film in Europe.

 

middle: the original spool of the 120 with the wooden core

left: same spool as it exist till today (plastic)

right: the all metal spool of the 620 (Kodak only)

• Two cameras, both made by the Kodak company in Stuttgart, used the 620 film and produced 6x6 negatives. The Kodak Suprema was a very sophisticated and expensive camera of which only few exist. The other one was a regular amateur camera called the Kodak Vollenda 620. Despite a short production time (1940 to 41) it must have sold well, as they easily available and carry no great collector value.

left: Kodak Suprema 620

right: Kodak Vollenda 620

Given the popularity and availability of the Kodak Vollenda 620, there is a good chance that this was the camera that the Poles had somehow acquired inside the camp. 

Kodak Vollenda 620 closed

When closed, it's compact and relatively easy to carry and conceal.

(continued here)