Eyes of War Photography

  • Frederick Lennart Bentley (United Kingdom, 1924). Interview outtake: “I was blinded by a German grenade during a night patrol near Caen in Normandy. My comrades left me behind. That was how it was: you didn’t help the wounded. (…) If the Germans had found me, they would have certainly shot me. you don’t give the wounded a bed, you bury them. I would have done the same myself.”
  • Karl Chromik (Germany, 1922). Interview outtake: “Everything suddenly went black. I didn’t have any pain but felt something on my chest. I heard a friend say, “Karl’s not going to make it.”
  • Peter Witteveen (the Netherlands, 1938). Interview outtake: “The war was a wonderful time. There’s no more adventurous life.”
  • Sieglinde Bartelsen (Germany, 1930). Interview outtake: “A man recently told me that I’m a good-looking woman. I thanked him for the compliment. he said, “That’s not a compliment, it’s a fact.”
  • Nina Golovataya (USSR, 1924). Interview outtake: “I now have the status of a first Group war Invalid. I have a good pension, and I can go to the sanatorium every year.”
  • Robert Grosskopf (Germany, 1919). Interview outtake: “In 1944 I was shot in the head near Minsk. That’s why I’m blind. I don’t like to talk about the war. Just occasionally with comrades. It’s all so long ago. I don’t let it bother me anymore."
  • Alfons Henne (Germany, 1935). Interview outtake: “I was taken to a hospital where one floor was completely full of children, about forty of them. They’d all picked up explosives. And they were also dying there."
  • Alf Lockhart (United Kingdom, 1918). Interview outtake: “I see nothing in the middle. If I look at someone, I can only see his chin, his hair, and his ears.”
  • Edith van der Meulen (the Netherlands, 1931). Interview outtake: “I’ve always wanted to prove my independence. as soon as someone thinks that I can’t do something, I want to do it myself.”
  • Valeriy Nezemskiy (USSR, 1932). Interview outtake: “I got fragments in my face and was flung against the wall by the blast. I could hear nothing. I felt blood, and then I lost consciousness.”
  • Norman Perry (United Kingdom, 1919). Interview outtake: “The funny thing is that I still see my wife as an eighteen-year-old girl. I’ve never seen my son but I’ve built up a mental picture of him. of everyone, in fact.”
  • Hans van der Veer (the Netherlands, 1928). Interview outtake: “Each day, I play blind scrabble with my wife, and we also try to solve a cryptogram. It keeps your mind active.”
  • At work
  • Barbara Bell (United Kingdom, 1921). Interview outtake: “I was sitting in the train to London when the German planes came. everyone wanted to get out of the train but that was impossible because it was still moving.”
  • Helene Boppert (Germany, 1938). Interview outtake: “The Americans dropped incendiary bombs on our street. Sixty-five people were killed. My father was killed, and both my brothers were killed. I was unconscious when slave laborers rescued me from our burning house. Both my legs were broken, and I could hardly see a thing.”
  • Eric Church (United Kingdom, 1924). Interview outtake: “I don’t know exactly what happened. Nobody told me. all I know is that I was sitting in a vehicle and that I was the only one who survived.”
  • Gerda Degenhardt (Germany, 1926). Interview outtake: “I was sitting next to the window when the Russian plane came. I still remember that it sounded like a sewing machine. Then the bomb exploded and flying glass blinded me in both eyes.”
  • Heinz Dembowski (Germany, 1920). Interview outtake: “God willed this so as to punish me for my sins. I don’t want to talk about my sins. That’s my secret. But I do know that I deserved my punishment.”
  • Corrie Doelman (the Netherlands, 1936). Interview outtake: “Yesterday, my guide and I took the train to Egmond aan Zee where we listened to the nightingales in the dunes. It was beautiful.”
  • Willi Finck (Germany, 1923). Interview outtake: “On april 30, 1945, I was shot down by three english Spitfires. I jumped from my stricken plane with splinter wounds in my eyes, hands, and legs.”
  • Elena Griczienko (USSR, 1939). Interview outtake: “We sat together with the cattle in a train carriage. There was hardly anything to eat, and I was ill. I had symptoms of frostbite in my legs and then in my eyes. I was blind by the spring. “
  • Herbert Jacob (Germany, 1925). Interview outtake: “I became a member of the blind people with no hands group. we swapped practical tips. for instance, one question was: how do you get the toothpaste onto your toothbrush?”
  • Irene Kondraschow (USSR, 1940). Interview outtake: “In March 1944, my mother took me to see some new baby lambs. she noticed that I couldn’t see them at all. (…) Vitamin deficiency was the cause of my blindness. It was due to the shortage of food during the war years.”
  • Erich Kühnholz (Germany, 1926). Interview outtake: “In the evening, my father would read to me from the newspaper or a book. These were moments of pure happiness.”
  • Engelbert Josef Mauss (Germany, 1936). Interview outtake: “In the bed next to me was a baby. I thought that the stork had brought it. Then a grenade hit the hospital. The windows shattered, and I ended up with splinters of glass in my face. But the baby was completely unharmed.”
  • Annemarie May (Germany, 1932). Interview outtake: “I feel like I’m living in a prison.”
  • Hartmut Mehls (Germany 1937). Interview outtake: “On one of the quieter days, I went outside and suddenly a grenade exploded.”
  • Pavel Michalov (USSR, 1934). Interview outtake: “When I regained consciousness, my ears were ringing, my right hand was gone, and I couldn’t see anything at all. I didn’t understand what had happened.”
  • Rosemarie Pinnau (Germany, 1938). Interview outtake: ““Bombs, bombs, bombs on Rosie’s head.” My mother told me that that was what I was singing an hour before the air-raid siren went off in Dortmund.”
  • Konrad Politowski (Germany, 1918). Interview outtake: “I ended up at the Adolf Hitler School for the Blind in Berlin. I was there with one hundred and sixty-five blind comrades. At the school I learned to make brushes.”
  • Dieter Renelt (Germany, 1938). Interview outtake: “I wanted to show my mother how good my eyes were and promptly ran into a tree.”
  • Albert Serdet (United Kingdom, 1920). Interview outtake: “Our sergeant was a bit mad. (…) He had thrown a shell at me. I don’t know what happened to him."
  • Ivan Skorobogatov (USSR, 1924). Interview outtake: “Now I spend the whole day doing nothing. In the summer I sit outside in front of my house. In the winter I sit inside and listen to the television. I’ve had a rotten life.”
  • Rudolf Söder (Germany, 1924). Interview outtake: “In 1994 I returned to the Crimea with my wife. all those images came back to me. (…) Then I was twenty, I was looking at the sea and thinking, “what am I doing here? This country doesn’t belong to us, does it?” I just wanted to swim away.”
  • Anja Stupp (Germany, 1970). Interview outtake: “It was 1982. (…) We heard sounds from the barn. We went inside and suddenly everything went flying through the air. Three friends (…) had found something in the woods that looked like a box. In the barn, they had tried to open it with tools. But it wasn’t a box, it was a mine. Everyone was killed in the explosion except for me."
  • Gerard Tieman (the Netherlands, 1926). Interview outtake: “After I heard that I was not going to regain my sight, I quickly accepted my fate. after a couple of weeks in the hospital, I was already singing in bed. You just have to make the best of it.”
  • Ron Tingay (United Kingdom, 1924). Interview outtake: “I believe in predestination. If you’re predestined for something like that, it will happen.”
  • Frank Tinsley (United Kingdom, 1919). Interview outtake: “You don’t think about being wounded when you’re young, you think that you’re going to live forever.”
  • Gerhard Wolf (Germany, 1928). Interview outtake: “As an exercise, we were throwing anti-tank grenades at trees. one of them didn’t go off. Our commandant wanted to teach us more about grenades and told us to go and sit next to it. We did that, and it exploded.”
  • Werner Vanneste (Belgium, 1933). Interview outtake: “At nine o’clock, a Belgian mortar grenade burst through the wall. Wilfred, my eight-year-old brother was killed, and I was blinded.”
  • Peter Witteveen with his portrait in the Kunsthal Rotterdam