Commons talk:Deletion requests/File:Kamianets-Podilskyi August 1941 roundup.jpg
{{ping|Poeticbent}} Contrary to the claim of the uploader, the author of the picture is not unknown. His name is Gyula Spitz. ([[:hu:Spitz Gyula]]). He was a truck driver in the Hungarian army in 1941, and he witnessed and photographically documented the rounding up of the Kamianets-Podolskyi Jews, just before they were all murdered. His photos are now in [http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/photoarchives/detail.aspx?id=1090887&search=Gyula+Spitz&index=2 the collection of the US Holocaust Museum] in Washington, which appears to have obtained them from Mr. Spitz's son, Ivan Sved. Mr. Spitz, who himself was Jewish, perished in the Mauthausen-Gunskirchen concentration camp sometime in the spring of 1945 (that is, more than 70 years ago). From a copyright point of view, I'm not sure what country's law applies. The location is in present-day Ukraine, so I doubt that Russian copyright law applies. At the time the picture was taken, the location was in a part of the Soviet Union occupied by Germany and Hungary. As a member of the Hungarian Army, Mr. Spitz was subject to Hungarian law at the time. I'm not sure when the picture was first published. It was clearly published in Martin Davis's book in 2010, and I very strongly doubt that it was published prior to the establishment of the Holocaust Museum on 1993. FWIW, the Holocaust Museum claims copyright in the description of the photo. Perhaps the theory behind that is that Mr. Sved inherited the copyright from his father and then transferred it to the museum. But if the picture became PD on January 1, 2016 (seventy full years having passed since the author's death), then that copyright is, of course, void at this point. My best guess is that the picture is PD in Hungary but it is copyrighted in the US, but what do I know... --[[User:Malatinszky|Malatinszky]] ([[User talk:Malatinszky|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 21:20, 15 November 2016 (UTC) * At the time this photograph was taken, Kamianets-Podolskyi was a city in Soviet Russia, not in sovereign Ukraine. It is a street scene in occupied USSR, depicting Soviet Jews. Thank you for letting us know who the photographer was. Personally, I was not aware of that. The listed source did not reveal the provenance of the image beyond its physical description. The caption at Davis 2010, page 12 in PDF, reads: :{{talkquote|A secret photo, taken by a Hungarian Jewish lorry driver, of Jews being marched through Kamenets prior to their mass murder by Hungarian soldiers and the German military police, which they undertook alongside the locally established German Gendarmerie (Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft) and SS Troops. The Hungarian soldiers and the German military police also supervised prisoners digging their graves. (end of quote) — Martin Davis, page 12, PDF}} :Notably, the USHMM overall claim of copyright cannot remain valid indefinitely. Mr. Spitz, like you say, died in the spring of 1945, more than 70 years ago, therefore his photograph entered Public Domain in Russia already. [[User:Poeticbent|<font face="Papyrus" color="darkblue"><b>Poeticbent</b></font>]] [[User_talk:Poeticbent|<small><font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk</font></small>]] 05:38, 16 November 2016 (UTC) I don't know what "Soviet Russia" is supposed to mean in this context. In August 1941 Kamianets-Podolskyi was a city in the Soviet Union, which was a federative state comprised of -- at the time -- 11 "republics". The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was a part of this federation, but as it happens, Kamianets-Podolskyi was situated in another one of the member republics, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Once the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, the Russian Federation became the successor state of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and Ukraine became the successor state of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. With that background, I fail to see why Russian law is any more relevant than, say, Quebec law would be relevant in the case of a picture taken in Vancouver. I don't know whether the applicable law should be Ukrainian (because of the location), German (because the location was under German military administration at the time) or Hungarian (because the author was a member of the Hungarian Army), but it's not Russian for sure. At any rate, none of the six cases enumerated in the PD-Russia template apply. Also, the statement that the picture was PD in its home country on the URAA date (January 1, 1996) is clearly false. --[[User:Malatinszky|Malatinszky]] ([[User talk:Malatinszky|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 14:49, 17 November 2016 (UTC) * I hear you. But the German military administration when the photograph was taken has absolutely no significance in this context because by international standards the occupation was an illegal act of war; and the Hungarian Army was part of the invading force. The only relevant law would be local in any case. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was not a sovereign state. But, given the circumstances, I tend to agree that Ukrainian copyright law would probably be most adequate, so I changed it. Thanks, [[User:Poeticbent|<font face="Papyrus" color="darkblue"><b>Poeticbent</b></font>]] [[User_talk:Poeticbent|<small><font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk</font></small>]] 15:12, 17 November 2016 (UTC) Thanks. Unfortunately US PD status is still unresolved because the photo was not PD in Ukraine on the URAA date. [[User:Malatinszky|Malatinszky]] ([[User talk:Malatinszky|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 15:23, 17 November 2016 (UTC) * Let's go back to the history of this photograph's publication for the moment. I seriously question that Davis (2010) was the first historian to use it. If you read Muehlenkamp's Yad Vashem research into the provenance of Kamenets-Podolsky photographs of the massacre,[http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-kamenets-podolsky-massacre_12.html] you will notice that they have been linked to earlier publications, probably by Ungváry (2005), Arad-Krakowski-Spector (1989), or Hilberg (1985) quoted by Muehlenkamp in Footnotes.[http://degob.org/index.php?showarticle=2019] They were not taken in complete secrecy, as the second driver, Gabor Mermelstein, who was also there as Gyula Spitz, testified that Hungarian-German relations in Kamenets were quite friendly.[https://web.archive.org/web/20120528064311/http://www.ordnungspolizei.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=218:kamenec-podolski&catid=38:articoli&Itemid=63&lang=en] I suspect that the photographs were already known to the Soviet [[:en:Extraordinary State Commission]] (ChGK) who published the official report in June 1944.[http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/chgkSovietReports.asp?cid=278&site_id=288][http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Kamyanets-Podilskyy/1939-1945.htm][http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/chgkSovietReports.asp?cid=278&site_id=288] [[User:Poeticbent|<font face="Papyrus" color="darkblue"><b>Poeticbent</b></font>]] [[User_talk:Poeticbent|<small><font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk</font></small>]] 15:59, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
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