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Fot: K. Szafranska
Lodz Ghetto – Equal and more equal than others
The exhibition ‘Lodz Ghetto Album’ in Side Gallery (9 Side, Newcastle upon Tyne) includes a collection of unique photos by Henryk Ross illustrating the dramas of life in the ghetto. The exhibition is composed of three kinds of photographs. The first are the genuinely terrifying ones, the production of which were life threatening, showing stored, dismembered human bodies, people dying of hunger on the streets, or those waiting with fear in their eyes for transportion to the camp. The second kind are official pictures, which reflect the ideology of the ghetto’s Jewish ‘king’, the head of the Judenrat, Chaim Rumkowski, who believed that working for and cooperating with the Nazis might save the Jewish community. The third group provokes the most contradictory emotions, portraying a rarely shown image of the ghetto’s elite, who, using their privileges, were able to commemorate events such as family parties, ceremonies and weddings. Lodz – Litzmannstadt Lodz, my home city, has always been very multicultural, being the historical home of four cultures: Poles, Jews, Germans and Russians. These cultures were all neighbours, living and working side by side. The war changed everything, new prejudices were formed and friends became enemies. In February 1940 the second largest ghetto came into existence where there was a Jewish administration with post, police, courts, schools, hospitals and a cultural centre. This was accompanied by a solidification of the social
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structure wherein elitism was apparent. Some of the inhabitants of the ghetto for example were ‘more equal than others’. Looking through the Henryk Ross Litzmannstadt pictures I search for places in Lodz that I once knew. I see characters on wooden bridges and I recognise Lutomierska, Zgierska and Podrzeczna Street. How much the city has changed, how many buildings are no longer there. Those reflections bring an even sadder realisation for me that many people visible in the photos certainly did not survive the war. Those pictures are the last piece of evidence to their existence. ‘Our way is work’ These propaganda pictures, taken by Henryk Ross, were commissioned on the order of the Nazi Statistics Department. They show workers in the factories with smiles on their faces showing no resistance to doing their job. To me this is proof that the ghettos were sadly efficient forms of production. Some historians suggest that the working day in the ghetto lasted as long as 12 hours. This life of drudgery, coupled with very poor food rations, led to the premature death of over 50,000 people inside the ghetto. E u r o p e a n
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‘Equal’ and ‘more equal than others’ I’ve been interested in Jewish wartime history for many years but during my extensive research I have never encountered so many photographs of the ghetto elite. Thanks to Henryk Ross’s photography we can see for ourselves the huge disparities between ghetto citizens. Especially poignant are the pictures of Jewish policemen posing with families and those of the laughing children dressed in police uniforms and brandishing batons. Henryk Ross skilfully captures the sense of dread described by the poet Primo Levi as the ‘grey zone’. This is where the boundaries between the victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust disappeared. Ross’s photos are fascinating research material illustrating the complex social structure inside the Lodz ghetto. The collection stirs up a magnitude of human emotions; mothers holding their children lovingly and people kissing romantically for example. I believe it is an exhibition worth seeing just to look at the photographs of people who sadly did not survive the terrible atrocities, and say to ourselves, ‘We Shall Remember Them’.
Katarzyna A. Szafranska
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