In September 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. By April 1940, the gates closed on the Lodz Ghetto, the second largest in the country after Warsaw.
Throughout the war, over 210,000 people would be imprisoned in Lodz.
Among those held captive was Henryk Ross. He was a Jewish sports photographer before the Nazi invasion and worked for the the ghetto's Department of Statistics during the war. As part of his official job, he took identification photos of the prisoners and propaganda shots of Lodz' textile and leather factories.
However, when the Nazis weren't looking, Ross stole film stock and surreptitiously took photos of the atrocities to "leave a historical record of our martyrdom."
Ross knew that if he was ever caught, he and his family would be tortured and killed.
Ross took photos of hangings, people lying in the street dying of starvation, and countless dead bodies in the morgue. He also managed to capture the day-to-day lives of the prisoners as they attempted to survive in squalor.
By the summer of 1944, over 45,000 people had died of starvation, disease, and murder in the ghetto, the vast majority of which were Jews, but some were Roma and Sinti. Tens of thousands were shipped off to concentration camps and murdered in gas vans at Chelmno.
Ross sensed that the end of the war may be near, so he buried over 6,000 negatives in the cold, hard Polish earth to leave a visual testimony of the Nazi atrocities.
On Jan. 19, 1945 the Soviet Army liberated the ghetto. Ross was among the 877 people who survived.
Two months later, Ross dug up his negatives. Most had been ruined by moisture but there were still hundreds that survived as evidence of the Nazi genocide.
In 1956, Ross and his wife immigrated to Israel. In 1961, he testified in the war crimes trial of the architect of Adolph Hitler's Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann. Some of Ross' photos were used as evidence.
Ross passed away in 1991 and his photographs were acquired by the Archive of Modern Conflict.
Here are just a few of Ross' chilling photographs taken at the Lodz Ghetto from 1941 to 1944.
Life in the Ghetto
"The potatoes in the ghetto were always rotten, frozen - garbage. But perhaps it was still possible to find something edible in the trash? Hundreds, especially children, would come to burrow in the buried pile in the ground in the hours when the watch was not strict." — Henryk Ross
Round-ups and Deportations to Killing Centers
Jews from the Lodz Ghetto were deported from Lodz via vans and cattle cars to death camps in Chelmno nad Nerem and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Jewish policemen are catching deportees trying to escape from the hospital at 36 Lagiewnicka Street, which was an assembly point for deportees. The photograph was taken on September 10, 1942." — Henryk Ross
Death in the Ghetto.
For more information, please visit The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross.
This article originally appeared on 08.20.19
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Ketel Marte was brought to tears during an MLB game after facing a shameful fan taunt.
Baseball manager's poignant support for a player brought to tears after shameful fan taunt
Whether they’re expecting perfection from their favorite players or, worse, behaving callously toward opposing teams, sports fans often forget that athletes are human beings. But athletic competition has the ability to unify and uplift, even amid such painful and unpleasant encounters. Take, for example, a major-league baseball game held June 24, 2025 between the home team Chicago White Sox and visiting Arizona Diamondbacks.
A shameful low point occurred when Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte was at bat in the seventh inning. Per ESPN, a fan reportedly yelled out a comment regarding Marte’s late mother, Elpidia Valdez, who died in a 2017 car accident in the Dominican Republic. Team personnel, including manager Torey Lovullo, then requested the 22-year-old fan be ejected. (Though he was remorseful and admitted his actions were inappropriate, according to an ESPN source, he was nonetheless banned indefinitely from all MLB ballparks.) "We commend the White Sox for taking immediate action in removing the fan," the MLB said in a statement. Marte reportedly declined to comment.
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While the fan’s behavior is inexcusable, it did spark a powerful and inspiring moment. After hearing the comment, Marte was visibly upset, prompting Lovullo to walk on the field, put his arm around him, and offer some words of encouragement. "[I said,] 'I love you, and I’m with you, and we’re all together, and you’re not alone,'" Lovullo said in a post-game interview, as documented by The Rich Eisen Show. "'No matter what happens, no matter what was said or what you’re heard, that guy is an idiot.’"
According to Arizona Republic, Lovullo heard the fan’s comment but didn’t want to repeat it. “I looked right at [Marte] when I heard,” he said. “I looked right at him, and he looked at the person, as well. He put his head down and I could tell it had an immediate impact on him, for sure."
Elsewhere in the post-game interview, the manager called the moment "terrible" and reflected on why he stood up for Marte. "Fans are nasty, and fans go too far sometimes," he said. "I love my players, and I’m gonna protect them…I’ve known Ketel for nine years. He’s had some unbelievably great moments and some hardships as well and some really tough moments in his life. I know those. At the end of the day, we’re human beings, and we have emotions. I saw him hurting, and I wanted to protect him."
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The following day, the Chicago White Sox X account sent out a message in support of Marte, writing, "We’re with you" and "Baseball is family." On The Rich Eisen Show, the show's host addressed the need to eradicate this kind of toxic athlete-fan interaction: "I was hearing [people saying], 'There’s no place for this in major league baseball.' There isn’t. There’s no place for this in our society. I understand that people are saying the MLB has got to do something about this. Fans have a right to heckle players—this is something that has happened forever…But there is a line."
In another recent, depressing sports moment with a beautiful coda, let’s look to Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Indiana Pacers and the eventual champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder. During the first quarter, Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton tore his right Achilles tendon—a devastating injury that could potentially sideline him for most of the 2025-2026 season. Following the game, in a lovely display of sportsmanship, Thunder point-guard and league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander went to the Pacers locker room to check on his competitor. In a press conference, he said, "You just hate to see it, in sports in general. But in this moment, my heart dropped for him. I can't imagine playing the biggest game of my life and something like that happening. It’s so unfortunate."
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