The Lodz Ghetto 1940 -1944

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When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, they created walled-off ghettos in the larger cities to concentrate and imprison the Jewish residents.

Henryk Ross worked as a news and sports photographer in the city of Lodz. Once in the city’s ghetto, he was employed by the Department of Statistics to shoot identification photos and propaganda images of the factories which used Jewish slave labor to produce supplies for the German Army.

When not on the job, he documented the horrific realities of the ghetto, at tremendous personal risk. Peeking his lens through holes in walls, cracked doorways, and the folds of his overcoat, he captured scenes of starvation, disease, and executions.

1940 - A man walking in winter in the ruins of the synagogue on Wolborska street (destroyed by Germans in 1939).

1940 - A man who saved the Torah from the rubble of the synagogue on Wolborska Street.

c. 1940-1944 - Sign for Jewish residential area (“Jews - Entry Forbidden”).

As tens of thousands of Jews were deported from the ghetto to the death camps at Chelmno and Nerem and Auschwitz, he kept shooting.

c. 1940-1944 - A group of women with sacks and pails, walking past synagogue ruins heading for deportation.

"Having an official camera, I was able to capture all the tragic period in the Lodz Ghetto. I did it knowing that if I were caught my family and I would be tortured and killed."--Henryk Ross

1940 - Henryk Ross photographing for identification cards, Jewish Administration, Department of Statistics.

c. 1940-1944 - Portrait of a married couple.

c. 1940-1944 A young girl.

c. 1940-1944 - A young boy searching for food.

c. 1940-1944 - A young boy begging on a sidewalk.

c. 1940-1944 - A nurse feeding children in an orphanage.

1942 - Young men pulling a cart for bread distribution.

c. 1940-1944 - A festive occasion before deportations for extermination began.

1942 - Children being transported to Chelmno and Nerem death camp.

I buried my negatives in the ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy.... I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish Jews. I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom. --Henryk Ross

c. 1940-1944 - "Soup for lunch” (Group of men alongside building eating from pails).

c. 1940-1944 - A sick man laying on the ground.

1944 - A boy walks among a crowd of people being deported in winter.

c. 1940-1944 - Deportation in winter.

c. 1940-1944 - Residents sorting belongings to be left behind after deportation.

1944 - Food pails and dishes left behind by ghetto residents who had been deported to death camps.

In late 1944, as the Soviets continued to push the Germans back and the Polish resistance rose up in Warsaw, it became clear that the Lodz Ghetto would soon be liquidated.

Believing that he could be deported to an extermination camp at any moment, Ross gathered 6,000 of his negatives, placed them in a tar-lined box, and buried them near his house in the hopes that someday they might be found.

The Soviet Army finally liberated what remained of the ghetto on Jan. 19, 1945. Of the more than 200,000 Jews who had passed through, just 877 remained.

Henryk Ross was one of them.In March 1945, he returned to his house on Jagielonska Street and dug up his time capsule. Moisture had destroyed or damaged half of the negatives, but enough had survived to ensure that the stories of those who lived and died in the ghetto would not be forgotten.

c. 1940-1944 - A negative that almost didn't survive; a smiling child.