Photo album of a Hungarian army medical doctor

Photographs of battlefields and outcomes of battles were taken by many forces since the American Civil War. And before that, artists were sent to the frontline to record the carnage. Let us not forget that Grigorescu drew some vivid paintings of people dead or dying in the battles of the War of Independence.

We do not know the context in which these photos were taken. As a medical oficer, he was probably also required to register/report deaths. It is possible that these photos were taken in order to be filed with the reports. Often when civilians deaths occur due to military actions there may be investigations and inquiries and such officers may be invited to testify. Let us not jump to the conclusion that there was a nefarious reason for these photos.

Radu

Considering some of the things done in WW2, these pictures taken by a military doctor during the Hungarian campaign into Transylvania, are very tame with regards their content, however, they are a record of historical value showing the true face of war,
in which the poor civilian, regardless of their ethnicity, have paid the ultimate price as is the case in most conflict worldwide from the past to the very present, and that's what most people would view them as.

Kevin in Deva.

Finally I agree! Not all the things are like they look like...

It is unfortunate that most photos don't have additional printed text to explain when and where the photo shooting occurred. For example, 1/sz.i.2 012c and 1/sz.i.2 012d (page 9).
The absence of explanatory text rise intriguing questions. In 1/sz.i.2 012d, is that dead body a naked woman? Why did those soldiers pose near the body? They have a posture like in a hunting trip, near a dead deer or bear.
The photos are interesting as source of information.

This post has been edited by Florin on April 20, 2011 03:02 pm

Valium, since you are new to the forum, I would like to inform you that we are trying to do something different on this forum than on many other Romanian forums (the fact that the language employed is English should be an indicator of this). For this purpose, we encourage posts that bring value to the discussions, not those that stir up flame wars or are just plain trolling. Please consider this in the future.

what can I say? I don't intend to inflame or to troll. I'll be more cautious, even I consider I was polite enough

After I watched the entire album I must confess that the impression it gave me was that of a collection of photographs taken on a trip (or tell you know how!) not a collection of propaganda-photos nore or a specialist one (I mean here taken from a doctor perspective). Indeed there is a number (limited true) of photos showing victims (some civil apparently other military) even if I can't remember if if there were actual battles fought (in august-september 1940) in Northern Transylvania back than... I mean fightings not isolated incidents like brief shootouts or something like this...
But my question is : the photo 2/v.11 with the tank and a dead soldier (so it seems to me) isn't from the battles from Ruthenia (march 1939 between Hungary and Slovakia) because the tank is surely a Skoda LT vz.35 and the hungarian army had no such tanks (actually just one captured from Slovakia back than).
What do you think about it?