Newly released photos taken by a Polish firefighter show the destruction of buildings by Nazis and the deportation of Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The photos were taken by Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski, then 23 years old, who secretly snapped the pictures. He was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto by Germans to ensure that the fires they started to retaliate against the Jewish resistance “did not spread to the houses on the ‘Aryan’ side,” according to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
The images show buildings on fire with smoke billowing, firefighting crews and Jews being evacuated. They are described by the museum as “imperfect” — some are blurry and partially obscured — but “priceless.” They are the only known photos not taken by Germans of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which lasted around one month in 1943. ...
“It seems that Leszek Grzywaczewski tried his best to record these scenes, realising the importance of documenting events inaccessible to the eyes of people on the other side of the ghetto wall,” the museum explained in an article about the discovery.
The Warsaw Ghetto was established in 1940 when around 400,000 Jews were forced into one small area of the city, where they suffered from deplorable living conditions including starvation and disease. In July 1942, Nazis began selecting Jews for deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp. The goal of the camp was to “eliminate the Jewish population.” From July to September, 265,000 Jews were deported and 35,000 were killed in the ghetto.
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