A U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum director says graphic
photos showing the corpses of Syrian torture victims reveal a
"systematic killing machine" that is reminiscent of the images from Nazi
concentration camps. In a chilling and potentially controversial exhibit that opens
on Wednesday, the museum will put on public display for the first time
photographs — smuggled out of Syria by a regime defector — that show the
emaciated and burned bodies of suspected dissidents believed to have
been killed in government detention centers.
The photos demonstrate
the "human indifference and depravity of the Assad regime," said
Cameron Hudson, a former White House national security official under
President George W. Bush who now serves as director of the Holocaust
Memorial Museum's Center for the Prevention of Genocide.
The
photos show "that this is methodical, that it's organized and that it
is a campaign that is going on across the country," said Hudson in an
interview with Yahoo News. "What the Assad regime would have you believe
is these are all combatants, that these are battlefield deaths, and
that they're fighting a civil war. And some of that may be true.
"But when you look at these photographs, and you look at how
they are … classified, by an internal classification system, you can
only come to the conclusion that this is a deliberate and systematic
attempt to eradicate enemies of the state." The photos, part of a trove of 27,000 such pictures now in the
hands of the FBI and State Department, have become crucial evidence for
human rights groups and some U.S. officials who want to bring war crimes
charges against the Assad regime. Stephen J. Rapp, the U.S.
ambassador-at-large for war crimes, told Yahoo News this week that they amounted to a "smoking gun" in efforts to hold the Assad regime accountable for its actions.
CLICK IMAGE for slideshow: (Photo combination by Yahoo News, Photos by SANA/AP Photo, Courtesy of The Caesar Team/Coalition …
But in highlighting the photos, the Holocaust Memorial Museum,
which is partly federally funded, might be seen as wading into a
sensitive foreign policy debate about how the U.S. government responds
to such images. President Obama last month announced an aggressive
bombing campaign targeting the militants of the Islamic State — bitter
and barbaric enemies of Syrian President Bashar Assad who U.S officials
believe are also a threat to the government of Iraq as well as
potentially the United States. U.S.-backed Syrian rebel groups have repeatedly complained that
by restricting its targets to the Islamic State, the White House
strategy may end up strengthening Assad, degrading one of his main
enemies and solidifying the control of his brutal dictatorship over
Syria. But Hudson says displaying the photos is in keeping with the
core mission of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, whose motto — emblazoned
on a banner outside its entrance — proclaims: "Never Again." "One of the things that strikes us, and that we hear an awful
lot, is that 'If only we had known more about what was going on during
the Holocaust. If only we'd known what was going on in Rwanda,'" Hudson
said. "Time and again" during the Nazi era, "we saw, you know, brave
witnesses coming out of concentration camps in Germany, in Poland, and
escaping to the West — to tell President Roosevelt, to tell senior
government officials," Hudson said. "And having that information not get acted on, I think, is one
of the great regrets of that period," Hudson added. "We did not want to
be a party to having that kind of story retold in our lifetime." As museum officials acknowledge, the photos are painfully
difficult to look at. They show corpses, some of them lined up in a
warehouse, many appearing to be victims of starvation, their ribs
protruding from emaciated bodies.
View photo
.
Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) (C) speaks as Syrian Army defector Caesar, (in a blue hooded jacket) who …
Others, not on display but among the archive obtained by the
museum, show "electrocution ... eyes being gouged out ... just a variety
of really, really, horrific acts," said Hudson. The defector who brought the photos to the West — using thumb
drives that he concealed in his shoes — is a former Syrian military
police photographer who goes by the code name of Caesar, given to him by
the Syrian resistance. According to the account he has given investigators, he had
headed a team assigned to photograph the bodies of Syrians brought to a
military hospital after they had died at one of three detention centers
around Damascus. After faking his death and escaping from Syria, Caesar — with
the aid of Syrian rebel groups — last July came to Washington, where he
met with U.S. officials, testified (wearing a hood) before the House
Foreign Affairs Committee and paid a visit to the Holocaust Memorial
Museum. "He is someone who could no longer live with himself and live
with being a witness and in some respects an accomplice to what the
regime was doing," said Hudson, who met with Caesar during his visit. What motivated Caesar to defect — and bring with him his damning evidence?
"When
it became personal to him," said Hudson. "He started recognizing people
from his village" whom he knew were not "combatants" as the Assad
regime had claimed, but victims who were in some cases "women and
children and elderly."
As Hudson and other museum officials see it, Caesar acted "with
a great deal of heroism" even though "he doesn't feel like a hero."
"He's
overwrought with guilt that he's been part of this regime," Hudson
said. "And I think he's really struggling to make sense of what he saw."
But in highlighting the photos, the Holocaust Memorial Museum,
which is partly federally funded, might be seen as wading into a
sensitive foreign policy debate about how the U.S. government responds
to such images. President Obama last month announced an aggressive
bombing campaign targeting the militants of the Islamic State — bitter
and barbaric enemies of Syrian President Bashar Assad who U.S officials
believe are also a threat to the government of Iraq as well as
potentially the United States. 
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