When the Lodz ghetto was sealed in May 1940, Henryk Ross was forced to move into the ghetto.
He managed to get a job as one of the official photographers in the ghetto, which gave him
access to film and processing facilities. He used these facilities to secretly take
pictures of the suffering of the Jews in the ghetto.
He hid his camera under his coat and he opened it slightly and took snaps of images he saw.
In this fashion, he managed to accumulate thousands of pictures that show us now what
life was like in the ghetto. A few of his pictures display public executions
and deportations. One of these pictures was taken in 1944 at the railroad station in the
Lodz ghetto. The photograph displays a cattle car and a group of people standing around it
If we look at the framing of the picture,
we can see that it is not centered, and this is important, because the photographer was
very professional and he was skillful. Furthermore, there's actually a black part on the left
hand side of the picture, and also building material in the foreground.
And all of these images are actually blocking the view of the person looking at the picture.
It shows us that he had to hide in order to take the picture.
The frame is actually showing the conditions of his hiding place - that he did not manage
to take a closer look at the actual scene.
Henryk Ross risked his life in order to show what the Nazis tried to hide, and when we
combine his testimony with a picture, we actually learn much more about the scene that we're
seeing in the picture.
We see people boarding the train, but we don't know what happens inside the cattle car, and
we also don't know what happens to the people when they arrive at their destinations.
So only if we contextualize the picture, and put it into context with other archives like
testimonies, maps, or historical accounts, do we gain a better understanding of what
was going on.
When the liquidation of the ghetto began in
1944, Ross decided to bury his archive in the ground of the ghetto so it could be dug
up later and bear witness to the persecution of European Jews.
"Just before the closure of the ghetto [1944] I buried my negatives in the ground in order
that there should be some record of our tragedy - namely the total elimination of the Jews
from Lodz by the Nazi executioners. I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish
Jewry. I wanted to leave an historical record of our martyrdom."
- Henryk Ross
Henryk Ross survived the Holocaust, and he managed to locate and dig up his material
after the war.
In comparison to the perpetrators' pictures,
we can see that his collection is exceptional because he clearly loved human beings and
social interactions, and felt compelled to commemorate the Jewish life in the Lodz ghetto.