“Before there was a number, there was a name: Aron Löwi.
Five days in Auschwitz and a photograph that survived his tormentors.
To remember is to resist.”

Who was Aron Löwi?
Aron Löwi was a Jewish merchant from Zator , a small town in Poland. On March 5, 1942, his name was reduced to a number: 26406. Transferred to Auschwitz from the prison in Tarnów , he was 62 years old—old enough to have lived a full life, young enough to still hope for peace. He died five days later , on March 10, 1942 .

What the photographs say:
The three portraits (frontal, profile, and three-quarter view) follow the protocol of the camp’s identification service
. On Aron’s striped jacket, one can see the triangular insignia prescribed by the SS:

• Yellow to indicate Jewish identity ;
• Red for the “political” category .

In many cases, these triangles were superimposed to create a two-colored six-pointed star —a system that depersonalized and classified prisoners through colors and categories .

In his sunken eyes and the still-visible bruises, we read disbelief , exhaustion , and that form of silent resistance in the face of the unimaginable. The photos were taken at the moment when heads were shaved, personal belongings were confiscated, and a name was replaced by a number .

Five days, a single line in the register.
A register page dated  March 10, 1942  , documents the administrative registration of  Aron Löwi . As with so many others:  no grave, no farewell  —just a brief line in a notebook and a few photographs. Early deaths—often within the first week—were common:  hunger, cold, illness, violence .

Portraits as Evidence—and as Reparation.
The  Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum  today preserves  tens of thousands  of registration photographs—only a fraction of the total collection destroyed during the Nazi retreat. Restoration and contextualization projects like  Faces of Auschwitz give a face, a biography, and a voice  to those whom the bureaucracy of murder   had reduced  to codes .

These images are  forensic evidence , but also  moral dialogues : They force us to look, to name, and to recognize the person behind the striped uniform. Every time we utter the name  Aron Löwi  ,   the machine that claimed to be able to erase him  fails again .

Why keep looking? Because the photograph has outlived
those who took it   . Because  memory lasts longer than hatred . Because  commemoration is a form of resistance  —a way  to give back to Aron Löwi  and so many others what was violently taken from them:  their humanity .