Sam Sussman

“It was not until Oxford that I encountered the image again. It was then I learned the photograph had been taken by an anonymous American soldier at Buchenwald, on April 16, 1945. It is among the most infamous visual portrayals of the Shoah not only because it depicts survivors at their moment of liberation, but also because, in the depths of the photograph, only his bald skull and tormented face visible to the lens, lies Elie Wiesel, whose account of the extermination camps in Night revealed more than any photograph could. Something else drew me to that photograph. On the twenty-three visible faces is the fullest range of human expression I have ever seen in one place: hope, resignation, thrill, humiliation, longing, and defiance.”
― Sam Sussman, Boy from the North Country: A Novel