I had family in that ghetto. Most were slaughtered after being shipped to the camps. The same propaganda that allowed this to occur is happening now in our country. I used to believe “never again” — now I am not so sure.
A German radio operator soldier, photographer Willy Georg, smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto in the summer of 1941, taking with him his Leica camera and four films. When he was discovered by a military patrol, they took his camera and a reel. He luckily he was able to hide the other three reels. Some of the photographs taken by this soldier are the ones we can see below. They would never have seen the light if it weren't for his expertise.
The Warsaw Ghetto was officially established on October 16, 1940. It was the largest Jewish ghetto implemented by the Nazis in Europe during World War II. In it all the Jews of Warsaw and the adjacent regions were locked up. It is estimated that the population of the ghetto was 400,000 people, 30% of the population of the Polish capital, crammed into an area equivalent to 2.4% of the city.
Hunger, disease, and mass deportations reduced this population to just 50,000 people.
One of the few pockets of resistance that Jews staged against the Nazis took place in the Warsaw Ghetto, the so-called Uprising. On April 19, 1943, armed civilians pushed back and withdrew more than 2,000 German soldiers, who had come to the Ghetto to quell some previous pockets of resistance. Finally the Nazis burned all the buildings in which armed civilians could be, thus quelling the resistance.
It is estimated that in those days more than 50,000 people were arrested, 7,000 were shot and another 7,000 sent to the Treblinka concentration camp, where they eventually died.
This is, very briefly, the sad story of the largest ghetto in Europe, the Warsaw Ghetto, and these are some images of the daily life of those who had to suffer such barbarity in 1941.
Below you can see 30 forbidden photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto.
1. Newspaper seller.
2. An anonymous woman.
3. Selling books in a market.
4. A ghetto dweller.
5. Peddling.
6. A man collapsed in the middle of the street. Dead?
7. Beggar.
8. Sale of firewood made with boards.
9. Misery and hunger.
10. Saleswomen in a street stall.
11. An old man.
12. A corpse in the middle of the street.
13. Street stall.
14. A beggar.
15. Tea time.
16. Selling shoes on the street.
17. Street stalls.
18. An extremely malnourished beggar.
19. There are no words.
20. Children begging.
21. Street tea stall.
22. Sale of charcoal and firewood.
23. Two old men.
24.
25.
26.
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30.
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