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A Jewish Photographer Buried These Photos So Nazis Wouldn’t Find Them, And They’ll Break Your Heart (NSFW)
In the winter of 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, Jewish photographer Henryk Ross buried a box of black and white photos in the ground. Just over a year later, he returned to unearth the historical photos, and the tragic story they told still resonates to this day.
Henryk Ross of Łódź, Poland was a simple news and sports photographer when German forces invaded his city in 1939. From then on, he survived by taking identity photos and propaganda shots for the Nazi Department of Statistics. While on the job, however, he risked his life to secretly document day-to-day events in the Łódź Jewish ghetto, which eventually included the deportation of its residents to concentration camps. Being at risk of a similar fate himself, he buried his photos near his house in a tar-sealed box, preserving evidence of the crimes against the Jewish population for future generations.
After the liberation of Łódź by the Soviet Army in 1945, Ross came back to dig up his time capsule, many of which were damaged or destroyed by groundwater. The ones that remained intact, though, provided an intimate look inside the lives of Polish Jews, many of whom met the most unspeakable of ends. These old photos now call the Art Gallery of Ontario home and live on as a memorial to the victims of the world's largest genocide.
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1940-1944: Portrait Of A Couple
1940: A Man Who Saved The Torah From The Rubble Of The Synagogue On Wolborska Street
1940-1944: A Boy Searching For Food
My grandmother told she and her siblings were looking for the rotten potatoes on the fields in winter after nazies burned all village. It happened in Belarus...
1940: A Man Walking In Winter In The Ruins Of The Synagogue On Wolborska Street (Destroyed By Germans In 1939)
I made reconstrucion of this Synagogoue as my academic degree here you can see how it looked https://youtu.be/BARy4alee6I :)
1944: Food Pails And Dishes Left Behind By Ghetto Residents Who Had Been Deported To Death Camps
Knowing what would happen with deportation, makes this photo incredibly powerful, without even showing a single person.
1940-1944: A Smiling Child
1945: Henryk Ross' Excavating His Hidden Box Of Negatives And Documents From The Lodz Ghetto
1940-1942: Woman With Her Child (Ghetto Policemen's Family)
1940-1944: Young Girl
1940-1944: Sign For Jewish Residential Area (“Jews. Entry Forbidden”)
1940-1942: Lodz Ghetto Prison At Czarnecki Street, A Rallying Point Before Deportation
1940-1944: A Wedding In The Ghetto
1940-1944: A Boy In A Doorway Swing
1940-1944: Deportation In Winter
Off to meet their maker & they didn't even know it.... I cannot imagine
1942: Children Being Transported To Chelmno Nad Nerem (Renamed Kulmhof) Death Camp
Brakes my heart. Saddest thing in my lifetime and now Syria. God must weep.
1940: Henryk Ross Photographing For Identification Cards, Jewish Administration, Department Of Statistics
1940: Baking Flat Bread
Good timing as we come upon our holiday of Passover or Pesach, Beginning sundown April 10th.
1940-1944: Young Girl Among The Greenery
1940-1944: Woman Sitting In The Ruins Of The Synagogue On Wolborska Street, Destroyed By The Germans In 1939
1940-1944: A Sick Man On The Ground
1940-1944: A Group Of Women With Sacks And Pails, Walking Past Synagogue Ruins Heading For Deportation
1940-1944: Children Looking Out The Window
1940-1944: Skulls And Bones On Ground
Heres a weird fact. If you go to the places where they burned the jews, you will see the most beautiful gardens there. Its because the ashes of the people are rich in nutrients. Its so sad, but beautiful.
1940-1944: "Soup For Lunch” (Group Of Men Alongside Building Eating From Pails)
1942: Police With Woman Behind Barbed Wire At The Ghetto
1940-1944: A Nurse Feeding Children In An Orphanage
1945: Three Men After Liberation By The Red Army
The Red Army raped the women and children they were liberating. Really messed up. It makes this photo anything but pleasing to me.
1942: Evacuation Of The Sick
1940-1944: The Removal Of Feces In The Ghetto By Men And Women Workers
1940-1944: A Jewish Policeman With His Wife And Child In Marysin
The thing that is so striking about this picture is that the Jewish police had a bad reputation for being complicit with the Nazis. Yet, members of the Jewish police were following orders at the risk of having their own families murdered. In the end, most of the Jewish police would have been deported and killed with their families.
1940-1944: Delivery Of Potatoes To The Ghetto
1942: Men Hauling Cart For Bread Distribution
1940-1944: A Scarecrow With A Yellow Star Of David
1940-1944: Body For Burial Tagged '54'
1940-1944: Corpses And Body Parts In The Morgue
1944: A Mass Deportation Of Ghetto Residents
Considering how horrific and inhumane the Holocaust was, it is hard to understand how, just a few decades after, the state of Israel can do what it does to the Palestinian population. Even today no only they deport Palestinian families out of their land, but also bulldoze theirs homes. It seems to me that the the victims of the past have become the perpetrators. Very sad.
1940-1944: A Group Of Young Residents Standing In A Line
1940-1944: Babies Lying On Floor Mat, Probably In The Hospital Nursery
1942–1944: Lodz Ghetto Police Escorting Residents For Deportation
I think the that the film being partially destroyed makes this an even better composition. Very apropos
1940-1944: Abandoned Body, Decomposing In Field
This person had loved ones but they weren't there or able to take care of him after death. Knowing a bit about Jewish funeral practices, it's horrible to think that no one was able to do the right thing by him. It adds another layer of sadness to this.
1940-1944: Man And A Boy Looking Out The Window
1940-1944: Portrait Of Stefania Schoenberg Posing In The Window
1940-1944: Two Young Women Observing The Bridge At Koscielyn Square, Crossing Zigerska Street
Plac Kościelny - Church Square. Sorry, i'm complaining about descriptions, but I'm living near of the places on photograpies, so i just can't leave it with mistakes :P
1940-1944: A Festive Occassion
1940-1944: A Performance Of 'shoemaker Of Marysin' In The Factory
1940-1944: A Boy Walking In Front Of The Bridge Crossing Zigerska (The "Aryan") Street
1940-1944: Residents Sorting Belongings Left Behind After Deportation
1940-1944: Children In Pond Searching For Items To Salvage
1940-1944: Man Brushing Hide In The Leather Factory
He has experienced a lot of hunger. He shows a lot of temporal wasting.
1940-1944: Nurse Holding Baby Before Surgery
My guess is this child/these children didn't survive... Back than the technologies wasn't advanced enough. To fix might be the wrong word here. But it's understandable you used this verb.
1940-1944: Portrait Of Two Women
1944: A Boy Walks Among A Crowd Of People Being Deported In Winter
1940-1944: Young Girls And Boys Working In A Workshop ("Ressort") In The Ghetto
1940-1944: Woman Posing With A Mail Truck
1940-1944: Youth Selling Goods On The Street
1940-1944: A Woman Sewing In A Workshop ("Ressort") In The Ghetto
1940-1944: Ghetto Buildings
1940-1944: Delegation After Liberation
1940-1944: A Corpse Is Taken Away
1942: Ghetto Residents Held For Deportation
I can't imagine the heartache of watching your family being separated and taken away.
1940-1944: In The Bakery
Obviously a propaganda photo. All the same, these men were working to literally make the bread of life available.
1940-1944: Man Working In A Workshop ("Ressort") In The Ghetto
They went to work...they held out hope.....even though they were starved, beaten and tortured...some human beings are the most evil creatures to walk or have walked on this Earth
1940-1944: Residents Sitting On The Street
Heartbreaking, sad, moving! I cannot understand mans hate for others, so much so they kill, torture and starve so many. I would die before I ever allowed such a thing to happen in my country!!!
1940-1944: Workers Breaking Rocks
reminds me the movie "Forest of the Gods" 2005. If anyone is interested in movies about nazi camps and the life in it, you should watch it. it is about Lithuanians being deported to german concentration camps.
1940-1944: Male Factory Worker Unloading Mattress Springs
1940-1944: Men Pulling Road Press
They have been treated worse than animals up for slaughter. I am so ashamed about the past of my country. It makes me absolutely sick! But this MUST be remembered!! I would like to believe that this will not happen again up to the point when everyone has forgotten about the tragedy. So these pictures need to go around the world for everyone to see them. This must never be forgotten!!!
The father of a family friend of ours had a jewish friend who before being deported, asked our friends father to keep his box of family silver safe for him until he returns. Our friends' Dad told him to place it under their piano, and no one but him will be allowed to take it from underneath. After all these years, it's still there...
I wonder how many of these people in the photographs (that were alive in them), survived after.
Not many for sure, before war in 1939 there were over 250 thousands Jews in Łódź, after liberation in 1945 only 900 Jewish people stayed alive within the city (and about 10 thousand managed to escape somewhere).
Load More Replies...Amidst the horrors that they witnessed every day (very precisely depicted in the photos), these people still had faith that they would only be 'relocated' and could later return to their homes. Having robbed of everything they had, they still could not believe that they would be robbed of their lives as well. If you think about it, this is not medieval history but only decades away from us. These photos are mementos of an age that we must remember and also remind others that what happened then must not happen again.
Very few decades too. My mom was born in 1942, I was born in '65 just a few years later. This really just happened yesterday
Load More Replies...The father of a family friend of ours had a jewish friend who before being deported, asked our friends father to keep his box of family silver safe for him until he returns. Our friends' Dad told him to place it under their piano, and no one but him will be allowed to take it from underneath. After all these years, it's still there...
I wonder how many of these people in the photographs (that were alive in them), survived after.
Not many for sure, before war in 1939 there were over 250 thousands Jews in Łódź, after liberation in 1945 only 900 Jewish people stayed alive within the city (and about 10 thousand managed to escape somewhere).
Load More Replies...Amidst the horrors that they witnessed every day (very precisely depicted in the photos), these people still had faith that they would only be 'relocated' and could later return to their homes. Having robbed of everything they had, they still could not believe that they would be robbed of their lives as well. If you think about it, this is not medieval history but only decades away from us. These photos are mementos of an age that we must remember and also remind others that what happened then must not happen again.
Very few decades too. My mom was born in 1942, I was born in '65 just a few years later. This really just happened yesterday
Load More Replies...