Taking a critical look at pictures that we assume are self-evident and true is not a challenge that we normally face. Nevertheless, the first step in the process of recognising genuine equality of rights involves finding out how representations of groups of people marked by some form of discrimination were historically produced and then reflecting on how many implicit prejudices are involved in them. Unless an effort is made to eliminate the presuppositions held by the social majority about what these “others” are like, legislation will make no difference. This is of course an uncomfortable task, because it brings us brought face to face with how far we are prepared to go to live in a society that is inclusive and just, and also a complicated one, because the objectives are not always obvious, even in the fight against discrimination. A case in point is the marked hierarchization of victims shown in the history of the way the Allied countries came to terms with the horror of the massive violence perpetrated under Nazism after the Second World War was over. A picture may help us penetrate the cultural underpinnings of our political attitudes. Among the best-known and most often reproduced photographs of Nazi terror is that of a young girl, her head covered with a scarf, looking apprehensively out of the wagon that will carry her off to Auschwitz, just moments before a soldier seals the door. In reality, this is not a still photograph, but a fragment of a short film that Rudolf Breslauer was forced to film; Breslauer was a Jewish prisoner from Westerbork, the transit camp that the train was leaving from.
