Couldn’t sleep last night, so I caught up on my magazine reading. Came across an article in this week’s New Yorker about a newly discovered photo album from Auschwitz. The photos show members of the SS relaxing and joking around — taking a break from sending people to the gas chambers.

I can’t find the article online, but there’s a short photo slideshow on the New Yorker’s website.

I read another story about this album in the New York Times a few months back. They’ve got a lengthier audio slideshow on their website, featuring an interview with Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

3:30 a.m. is definitely the time to ponder these incredibly disturbing images. The phrase “banality of evil” doesn’t even scratch the surface.

This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2008.

Seven Days’ deputy publisher and co-owner Cathy Resmer is a writer, editor and advocate for local journalism. She works in the paper’s Burlington office and lives vicariously through the reporters while raising money to pay them. Cathy started at Seven Days as a freelance writer in 2001 and still has the Rolodex to prove it. As the paper’s first online editor, she launched Seven Days email newsletters and started the paper’s first social media accounts. Cathy has overseen Kids VT, Vermont’s...