Polish Jewish
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...
photographer who was employed by the Department of Statistics for the
Jewish Council
A ''Judenrat'' (, "Jewish council") was a World War II administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish communities across occupied Europe, principally within the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to form a ''Judenrat'' in every com ...
within the
Łódź Ghetto
The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of Ge ...
during
the Holocaust in occupied Poland
The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
...
.
About
Ross was born in 1910. Ross was a sports photographer for a Warsaw newspaper, prior to World War II.
Starting in 1940, Ross had been employed by the Department of Statistics for the
Jewish Council
A ''Judenrat'' (, "Jewish council") was a World War II administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish communities across occupied Europe, principally within the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to form a ''Judenrat'' in every com ...
within the
Łódź Ghetto
The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of Ge ...
during
the Holocaust in occupied Poland
The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
...
. Daringly, working as staff photographer, Ross also documented
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
atrocities (such as public hangings) while remaining officially in the good graces of the German occupational administration.Isaiah Trunk 2008, Łódź Ghetto: A History '' pp. 53-56.
Part of his official duties was taking identity photographs. He constructed a three level stage in his studio that let him photograph up to twelve people with a single negative. While the authorities only supplied him enough film for assigned work, this trick allowed him extra film he could use for unauthorized photography.
His unofficial images covered scenes from daily life, communal celebrations, children digging for scraps of food and large groups of Jews being led to deportation and being loaded into box cars. As the ghetto was being liquidated in the fall of 1944, Ross buried his photos and negatives in a box, hoping they might survive as a historical record. He was able to dig up the box in January 1945, after the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
liberated Poland. Much of his material was damaged or destroyed by water; still, about half of his 6,000 images survived.Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross Art Gallery of Ontario, 2015
Ross later testified during the 1961 trial of
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...
(MFA), which makes it one of the few US museums to own work by Ross.