Standing in her blue and white striped prison uniform, the snapshot of Helena Citronova could pass for one of many tragic mementos of Auschwitz. Except for one glaring difference — she's smiling.
And it's not the nervous grin of an inmate terrified of offending the Nazi holding the camera in the Third Reich's most notorious death camp.
She appears genuinely happy, her wide smile animating a beautiful, apple-cheeked face that shows little evidence of the starvation and brutality that ravaged her fellow prisoners.
In fact that's because Helena wasn't performing for the camera as the man holding it, SS Unterscharfuhrer Franz Wunsch, was her lover.
'Yes, she was the love of his life,' says the Nazi's daughter Magda nearly 80 years later.
He treasured that photo, I know. He would take reproductions. He copied the picture and I know he even took the head off and put it on different clothes, on a different background.'
It's not surprising Wunsch might want to forget where and when the photo was taken. His romance with Helena is surely one of the most astonishing and unlikely stories to emerge from World War II.
