The original black-and-white image of Czeslawa Kwoka is that of a young Polish girl, one of the hundreds of thousands of children murdered by the Nazi regime. The record of her arrival at the Auschwitz extermination camp in December 1942 shows a frightened-looking girl with coarse-cut hair and a wounded lip, an injury caused by a guard just moments before being photographed.

The image, originally in black and white, is even more striking when viewed in color, thanks to the work of Brazilian artist Marina Amaral, who digitally colors old photographs with remarkable precision and realistic tones. For the artist, the colorization of Kwoka's photo made the girl appear to be a real human being: "A 14-year-old girl, not just a statistic."

Read more: Colorized photo of girl at Auschwitz strikes chord on social media

'People understood the message'

Watch video 12:04 Share 'I speak for the dead' Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2rgE7 Leon Schwarzbaum: “I speak for the dead because they can’t speak for themselves.”

In recent weeks the image has gone viral on social media after having been shared by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Poland, which once housed the largest of the Nazi extermination camps.

In an interview with DW Brazil, Amaral says she chose Kwoka's photo to color because she was impacted by the expression on the girl's face. "When I first saw her, I could not forget her. I wanted to humanize her and tell her story," she recalls.

But the huge response was a surprise, says the artist, who has since gained prominence in the international press. "It was completely surprising, I received messages from all over the world. I was very happy when I realized that people understood the message and felt the same way I did."

Read more: Last letters from the Holocaust – Remembering the victims

Amaral's colorization of Hitler with some of his SS guards at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia

Painstaking process

Amaral began to casually use Photoshop as a child. Years later, in 2015, when she came across a collection of World War II color photos in an online history forum, she decided to try the technique. "I started practicing without having any idea which way to go, and I didn't stop. Since then, I have been able to develop my own techniques, and eventually, unexpectedly, it has become my career," says the self-taught artist.

The image coloring process is done entirely in Photoshop, manually, and can last for weeks. "While a simple portrait can be done in 40 minutes, a more complex and detailed photo can take up to 40 days," she explains. Some 98 percent of the photos she uses are in the public domain, made available by government agencies, libraries and museums. The rest of the photographs are offered by collectors, historians or institutions.

Read more: Auschwitz trial documents, recordings awarded special UNESCO status

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Dachau The Nazi regime opened the first concentration camp in Dauchau, not far from Munich. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power it was used by the paramilitary SS "Schutzstaffel" to imprison, torture and kill political opponents to the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Wannsee House The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in planning the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to plan what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Bergen-Belsen The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, so many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame posthumously after her diary was published.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Buchenwald Memorial Buchenwald near the Thuringian town of Weimar was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe here and murdered 64,000 of them.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Nazi party rally grounds Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of the Second World War. The annual Nazi party congress as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants took place on the 11-km² (4.25 square miles) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Memorial to the German Resistance The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler that failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which is today the German Resistance Memorial Center.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Hadamar Euthanasia Center From 1941 people with physical and mental disabilities were killed at a psychiatric hospital in Hadamar in Hesse. Declared "undesirables" by the Nazis, some 15,000 people were murdered here by asphyxiation with carbon monoxide or by being injected with lethal drug overdoses. Across Germany some 70,000 were killed as part of the Nazi euthanasia program. Today Hadamar is a memorial to those victims.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Holocaust Memorial Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated sixty years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Memorial to persecuted homosexuals Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The four-meter high monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Sinti and Roma Memorial Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani: "gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears."

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust 'Stolpersteine' - stumbling blocks as memorials In the 1990s, the artist Gunther Demnig began a project to confront Germany's Nazi past. Brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former houses of Nazi victims, provide details about the people and their date of deportation and death, if known. More than 45,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in 18 countries in Europe - it's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Brown House in Munich Right next to the "Führerbau" where Adolf Hitler had his office, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party in Germany, in the "Brown House" in Munich. A white cube now occupies its former location. A new "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the liberation from the Nazi regime, uncovering further dark chapters of history. Author: Max Zander, Ille Simon



Variety of images

When choosing the images, the artist also takes into account the visual impact that the photo will have, but the historical context of photography is the determining factor. "Unfortunately I'm a bit limited, because there are themes I'd love to explore, but I just cannot find the photos under the conditions I need, in the public domain and in high resolution."

According to Amaral, this is why her portfolio has very few records related to her homeland. "I would love to do a series about Brazil's participation in World War II, for example. I received very interesting material recently, and I'm talking to some people to try to bring this idea to life," she says.

Amaral's colorized image of Martin Luther King Jr. and associates at the Civil Rights March on Washington

Amaral's work mainly involves images from the first half of the last century, when color photography was still taking its first steps. In addition to historical events such as the Holocaust, she also colors portraits of personalities such as Martin Luther King Jr., former US President Abraham Lincoln and German physicist Albert Einstein.

One of her most recent works was in Germany: a series of old photos depicting 10 important moments in the history of German football. The black-and-white images were first shown in color at an exhibition at the German Football Museum in Dortmund.

Read more: Auschwitz museum plans traveling exhibition

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Colorizing is 'an obsession'

The colorization of black and white photos is nothing new. Today, there are hundreds of tutorials on the internet, forums with tens of thousands of subscribers and even an algorithm that does the work by itself. But for Amaral, "coloring old images is not just a hobby, it's an obsession." US tech magazine Wired concurred, calling the Brazilian the "master of colorization."

Before beginning the colorizing work, she conducts a rigorous research process to render the colors as close to reality as possible. For this, she also counts on the help of historians and specialists, who analyze the most relevant details of the photo – from the clothes to the decorative elements.

Read more: How Germany deals with Nazi propaganda films today

"Research is the most important part of the process because these photographs are historical documents, and I have to respect as many features as possible," explains the artist. There are cases, such as certain locations, military uniforms and medals, where it is possible to reproduce the exact colors by utilizing visual descriptions made in periodicals, documents or books.

The coloring of the photo of Czeslawa Kwoka, for example, was based on two details: the color of the uniforms used by the prisoners in Auschwitz and the color of the triangle stuck to the garment. "These triangles could be of various colors, because they were used to identify each prisoner according to the group to which he belonged," says Amaral. In the Polish teenager's case, the triangle was red, indicating that she was a political prisoner, and carried the letter P, for Polish.

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'Most important photo I've ever taken'

Kwoka, who was not Jewish, was deported from the Zamosc region of southeastern Poland to Auschwitz. She arrived in the Nazi camp on December 13, 1942 along with 318 other women, including her mother, Katarzyna, who would die two months later. The 14-year-old girl was murdered on March 12, 1943 with a lethal injection into the heart.

"Czeslawa's photo is certainly the most important photo I've ever taken," says Amaral. "When I got the color of her face back, I managed to show the blood on her lower lip, the marks, the fear in her eyes." The man who photographed Kwoka – Auschwitz survivor Wilhelm Brasse – said the girl had been beaten by a guard who was annoyed because she did not speak German. Besides Jews, Christian citizens of Poland were also persecuted by Nazi Germany. It is estimated that the regime was responsible for the deaths of at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Poles during World War II, whether in battles or extermination camps.

Amaral's colorization of a scene from the liberation of the Laagberg camp

Kwoka image led to more

With the impact generated by the photo of Kwoka, the artist had the idea of creating a project entirely aimed at recovering stories and photos related to the Holocaust. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum has come on board and will make available its archives and a research group to assist her in the project.

Now Amaral is preparing to launch her first book, "The Color of Time: A New History of the World 1850-1960", which is set to launch in European bookstores in August. The work is a partnership with British writer, historian and TV presenter Dan Jones, and brings together 200 photos she restored that cover world history during the period from 1850 to 1960.

"Dan and I met on Twitter, and shortly afterwards he invited me to create the book," says the artist. The bestselling British writer wrote captions that explain the historical context of each of the images. "Most of these photos have never been seen in color before," says Amaral.

Amaral says that the goal of her work is to bring people closer to the realities of the past. "The fact that we live in a world so filled with visual stimuli creates a deeper connection when we see those color photos," says Amaral. "In that way it is easier to create an empathetic connection with the historical characters, and they no longer seem like fictional characters who only exist in books."