While it seems like a pretty ridiculous thing to say, there's something about color photos that create a more vivid picture of reality than their black and white counterparts.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the colored portrait of a 14-year-old girl murdered in Auschwitz has gone viral. The images were uploaded to Twitter and lay bare the heartbreaking reality of the Holocaust.
The photos were re-touched by artist Marina Amaral, who has managed to breathe life into a black and white image from one of the most disturbing and inhumane periods of modern history.
It took Amaral months of work on photoshop as well as extensive research, but the finished result manages to bring life and personality to the innocent young victim of the Nazi regime.
Czestawa Kowka was deported by the Nazis from Poland as part of their plan to create a "living space" in the east. She arrived at Auschwitz alongside her mother on December 13, 1942, on a train with 318 other innocent women. She was given the number 26947 and died in the camp just 67 days later on February 18, 1943. Czestawa was murdered with a phenol injection to the heart - a common method of execution for Polish children who were not deemed racially suitable to be "Germanised."
The girl seems to have suffered multiple wounds to her face, especially on her lip; and according to Wilhelm Brasse, a survivor of the holocaust and the man behind the registration picture, the girl was beaten by one of the guards.She was one of approximately 230,000 children and 1,300,000 people who were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945.
According to Marina, as she began to transform Czestawa's photo into color, she realized that she was wearing a red triangle with a black "P" in the center. This means that the young girl had been taken in as a political prisoner.
"When we see the photos in black and white, we get the feeling that those events happened only in the history books," she said.
"According to the photographer’s account, Czeslawa had just been beaten by a guard before the photo was taken.
"By restoring the colors on her face, I was able to show the colors of the blood and the bruises, which made everything even more real."
Marina says that the color makes it easier for people to relate to those in the photos.
"These people were human beings who had dreams, ambitions, fears, friends, family, and had all this taken from them," she added.
"Unfortunately, Czeslawa was just one among millions of others, but the expression on her face – so much fear, and at the same time so much courage, will stay with me forever."
The images of Czeslawa are horrifying both in color and in black and white. But, as Marina says, the addition of color simply makes everything more real.