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The break is hardly peaceful.

The seven Red Army soldiers have taken a table and chairs outside, put a tablecloth on it and smile into the photographer's lens.

Tried a bit, though, because a tank is standing between two badly damaged houses.

A picture that shows a quick breath during the bigger battle, not its end.

Valery Faminsky, portrait 1945

Source: Arthur Bondar / Verlag Buchkunst Berlin

The picture was taken by Valery Faminsky, photo reporter for the 1st Belarusian Front and specially on the road on behalf of the Art Department of the Military Medical Museum of the Red Army (WMM) to document the work of the medical departments.

But of course the 31-year-old does not only press the trigger in hospitals or when he has wounded Red Army soldiers in front of him.

In fact, in the second half of April and the first half of May 1945, he documents a lot that comes before his lens during the advance of the Red Army on the Reich capital.

For example, he labels the photo of the resting soldiers with “Panzer brigade during a short break.

Seelower Heights, April 1945 ”.

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In his curriculum vitae, Faminsky writes that after his return to Moscow by May 8, 1945, he “edited the entire material and handed it over to the WMM's holdings”.

But that's not true - luckily.

He kept almost 500 negatives from the battle for Berlin and from the first days of peace in the devastated city and did not publish them for his entire life.

The images only reappear after his death in 1993 and the death of his wife: Ukrainian photographer Arthur Bondar came across an online ad in 2016 in which “the negatives of a Soviet photographer from the time of the Second World War are for sale”.

He acquires and sifts through them - a historical treasure.

Rubble women on duty at the Reichstag in May 1945

Source: Valery Faminsky / Private collection / Arthur Bondar / Verlag Buchkunst Berlin

The publishers Thomas Gust and Ana Druga will turn it into an award-winning book in 2018.

For the whole of May 2021 - since a face-to-face exhibition of Faminsky's pictures is currently not possible - they will be offering a virtual exhibition and three additional online tours together with Arthur Bondar.

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On the one hand, Faminsky's photos are exciting because they significantly expand the well-known photo material from Berlin around the end of the war.

Almost all of the usual motifs shown come from Soviet war propaganda, including those from the Red Army's most famous front-line reporter, Yevgeny Chaldej, or are still images from the battle scenes that were produced for the Soviet “newsreel” at the beginning of May.

Personal effects in a suitcase - a Berliner 1945

Source: Valery Faminsky / Private collection / Arthur Bondar / Verlag Buchkunst Berlin

Of course, Faminsky's perspective is also that of a conqueror.

The acts of violence that the Red Army soldiers in the last days of the war and the first days of peace, especially women, do not occur with him.

As evidenced by the almost 500 pictures he has withheld, he is not only interested in documenting the triumph, which is of course his mission.

Rather, as the historian Peter Steinbach emphasizes, it focuses on the “suffering and suffering people”.

On both sides.

For example, Faminsky photographs a not so old, but careworn-looking woman who sits on the curb in front of hardly damaged apartment buildings and apparently carries all her belongings with her in a box.

Or a group of men, women and a child who are in a handcart in front of badly damaged houses.

The street has already been cleared of rubble, so the photo must have been taken towards the end of his time in Berlin.

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However, the photographer also retains numerous shots that correspond to his actual assignment.

For example, two Red Army soldiers who are sitting on a kind of terrace with bandages on their heads and cleaning machine guns.

"A wound is a wound, but work is work," Faminsky's caption reads.

Not only people suffer in war - Berlin-Kreuzberg in May 1945

Source: Valery Faminsky / Private collection / Arthur Bondar / Verlag Buchkunst Berlin

And he is not only interested in people's suffering due to Hitler's return to Germany's war, but also in that of other creatures: In Kreuzberg he photographs a lost horse that has been tied with a white cloth around its neck like a bandage;

in the background men in civilian clothes and women are out and about.

Something strangely melancholy emanates from this picture, as from many of the photos by Faminsky, who is obviously not your usual war photographer, but as Steinbach writes: “You can feel the pity of the beholder for the women who carry buckets of water and strive for the street, distraught feels the seemingly existentialist loneliness of the pedestrian, who no longer bears any resemblance to a strolling passer-by. "

Virtual exhibition from May 2, 2021 at www.buchkunst-berlin.de.

Online tours on May 1st, 8th and 31st, 2021 from 5 p.m.

Also as a book: “Berlin May 1945” (Verlag Buchkunst Berlin. 184 p., 48 euros).

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