In this book’s extensive essay entitled, Amnesia and Anamnesis, eminent art historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh explores both the historical and the modern art contexts which inform Richter’s Birkenau series of paintings.

In this work, Gerhard Richter refers to photographs taken by the Jewish ‘Sonderkommando’ at Birkenau Concentration Camp in 1944. These photographic documents provide the basis for the first layer of his painting, which is followed by further, reworking painting processes.

Through a suite of images in this book, the visual evolution of the Birkenau paintings is revealed – from the original archive photographs, to an increased phasing into abstraction.