Mug Shot

Mug shot of Lotte Franklova (later Weiss), prisoner number 2065, Auschwitz.

The Auschwitz collection of prison photographs consists of 38,916 photos: 31,969 photos of men and 6,947 photos of women. Photographs were taken in three body positions: profile, facing forwards and en face (with cap or scarf). In the bottom left corner are respective camp numbers, nationality, the reason for which a given prisoner was in the camp and the ‘KL Auschwitz’ reference.

Lotte was born in 1923 in Bratislava. In 1939, Slovakia, where she lived, became an independent state and the government enforced anti-Jewish laws. In 1941, Jews were forced into the Jewish quarter and Lotte's eight-member family squished into a little flat. Soon Lotte and two of her sisters were taken to Auschwitz where they were shaved, tattooed, and assigned to work digging in a field. One day Lotte was caught attempting to help her sisters and told she was going to a punishment camp – at this point she was photographed for the 'mug shot'. An SS guard counted the women as they piled into the vehicle. Once 20 were counted, Lotte was told, "You get lost. I haven’t got room for you." She ran back to her barracks and was reunited with her sisters, but it wasn’t long before she was alone, the sole survivor of her family.

Lotte secured easier work in ‘Kanada’ where all the belongings brought by the Jews were taken and sorted. In January 1943, she was moved to an indoor job in the administrative offices of Auschwitz. Because she was working with civilians, she was kept clean and warm for the remaining two years – a job that was for her the difference between life and death. In January 1945, Auschwitz was evacuated and Lotte was moved through Gross Rosen, Flossenbürg, Hainichen and Theresienstadt, where she was liberated on 8 May 1945. Lotte married in 1947 and the following year left Czechoslovakia to join her brother-in-law in New Zealand. Her sons moved to Sydney in 1983 and Lotte joined them three years later.