The photographer is usually named only as Alex, a Jewish inmate from Greece. Several sources have identified him as Alberto Errera, a Greek naval officer who was shot and killed after striking an SS officer.Errera's code name was Alekos Alexandridis. Other members of the Sonderkommando in the camp's crematorium V-Alter Fajnzylberg (also known as Stanisław Jankowski), brothers Shlomo and Josel Dragon, and David Szmulewski [fr]-helped obtain and hide the camera, and acted as look-outs.Fajnzylberg, who had worked at crematorium V since July 1943,described how the photographs came to be taken:
On the day on which the pictures were taken ... we allocated tasks. Some of us were to guard the person taking the pictures. In other words, we were to keep a careful watch for the approach of anyone who did not know the secret, and above all for any SS men moving about in the area. At last the moment came. We all gathered at the western entrance leading from the outside to the gas-chamber of Crematorium V: we could not see any SS men in the watchtower overlooking the door from the barbed wire, nor near the place where the pictures were to be taken. Alex, the Greek Jew, quickly took out his camera, pointed it towards a heap of burning bodies, and pressed the shutter. This is why the photograph shows prisoners from the Sonderkommando working at the heap. One of the SS was standing beside them, but his back was turned towards the crematorium building. Another picture was taken from the other side of the building, where women and men were undressing among the trees. They were from a transport that was to be murdered in the gas-chamber of Crematorium V.
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