Eric L. Muller is Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in
Jurisprudence and Ethics at the University of North Carolina
School of Law and director of the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill’s Center for Faculty Excellence. His newest book,
“Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese
American Incarceration in World War II,” is now available. His
blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the
Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series.
For more information on the series, please visit: What does a
concentration camp look like? Does it look like this? (Set aside
for a moment the fact that it’s a color photo, and that we’re
accustomed to imagining concentration camps in black and white.
The photo is from 1943, and yes, it’s in color — but more on
that later.) It could just as easily be a shot of Flossenbürg, a
camp in far eastern Bavaria housing mostly political prisoners
for forced labor. Conditions were harsher and many more people
died at the notorious