U.S. Holocaust Museum displays graphic photographs of Syrian victims

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington is displaying a series of graphic images that it believes were taken by a Syrian military photographer assigned to take pictures of the corpses of those who died at the hands of the Syrian government.

Officials at the museum said that the photos went on display starting Wednesday and that the gruesome images were leaked by the photographer, who defected from Syria and smuggled more than 55,000 images out of the country on flash drives and brought them to the museum.

A statement on the museum’s website says that the current Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad believes the photos to be fake, “but forensic and international law experts have authenticated them and found the defector’s story credible.”

The museum said it is “sharing these photos with the public to document the severity of the crimes the Syrian government is committing against its own people.”

The photographer’s identity has not been revealed by the museum, except through the Twitter account @StandwithCaesar. There is also a Facebook page associated with the Twitter account. The photographer gave testimony before a Congressional hearing in July wearing a blue hooded outfit to conceal his identity.

In recent months, a delegation from the U.S. Holocaust Museum traveled to Jordan to catalogue the plight of refugees fleeing Syria. Their findings have been published on the museum’s website.

Some of the photographs from the new exhibition have been compiled into a YouTube clip that the museum has posted online. (Warning: The images are extremely graphic in nature.)

Twitter: @DavidNgLAT