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He photographed Nazi atrocities and buried the negatives. The images are unforgettable.

He risked his life to leave a "historical record of our martyrdom."

He photographed Nazi atrocities and buried the negatives. The images are unforgettable.
Henryk Ross was a Jewish sports photographer. | via Yad Vashem and Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007

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 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's textile and leather factories.

Prisoners of the ghetto.
via Bild Bundesarchiv / Wikimedia Commons | Prisoners of the ghetto.

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 was aware that being caught would likely result in torture and death for both him and his family.

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, primarily Jews along with members of the Roma and Sinti communities, had perished in the ghetto due to starvation, disease, and murder. Tens of thousands were forcibly deported to concentration camps, where many were murdered in the gas vans of Chelmno.

As the war seemed to be drawing to a close, Ross buried over 6,000 photographic negatives in the ground, hoping to preserve 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.

Henryk Ross questioned during the Eichmann Trial.
Courtesy of Israel Government Press Office | Henryk Ross questioned during the Eichmann Trial.

 In 1956, Ross and his wife moved to Israel, where Ross later testified at the 1961 war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of Hitler's Final Solution. 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 ruins of a synagogue on Wolborska Street demolished by Germans in 1939.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | The ruins of a synagogue on Wolborska Street demolished by Germans in 1939.
Execution by hanging in the ghetto.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Execution by hanging in the ghetto.
Sorting through belongings left after deportation.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Sorting through belongings left after deportation.
Men hauling the cart for bread distribution.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Men hauling the cart for bread distribution.
Children digging for potatoes
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Children digging for potatoes

"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

Children sitting on the floor.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Children sitting on the floor.
Cleaners in the ghetto.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Cleaners in the ghetto.
Cook ladling soup into pails for captives.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Cook ladling soup into pails for captives.

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.

"Evacuation of the sick" (and aged, by horse-drawn cart).
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | "Evacuation of the sick" (and aged, by horse-drawn cart).
Boy walking to deportation in a group, wearing cap, satchel and backpack.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Boy walking to deportation in a group, wearing cap, satchel and backpack.
Mass deportation.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Mass deportation.

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

Deportation from the hospital
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Deportation from the hospital

Death in the Ghetto.

A young ghetto victim in the morgue.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | A young ghetto victim in the morgue.
A dead boy labeled number 59.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | A dead boy labeled number 59.
Corpses and body parts in the morgue.
Gift from Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007 | Corpses and body parts in the morgue.

For more information, please visit The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross.

 

This article originally appeared on 08.20.19

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