The good life of the Auschwitz guards

At first glance, the photographs seem innocuous enough. Men and women in uniform lie back in deckchairs, listen to accordion music, decorate a Christmas tree.

Karl Hoecker and his dog, Favorit (courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

It seems like a carefree life - but the pictures were taken at the Auschwitz death camp at the height of the Holocaust.

The happy men and women are Nazi officials enjoying time off from the business of genocide, their images collected by Karl Hoecker, an adjutant to the camp commander.

His unique album of 116 photographs was found in Frankfurt in 1946 by a US intelligence officer, who kept it to himself for six decades before showing it to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum last year.