Jewish Boy Surrenders in Warsaw, 1943

The terrified young boy with his hands raised at the center of this image was one of nearly half a million Jews packed into the Warsaw ghetto, a neighborhood transformed by the ­Nazis into a walled compound of grinding starvation and death.

Photograph by unknown, 1943

Beginning in July 1942, the German occupiers started shipping some 5,000 Warsaw inhabitants a day to concentration camps. As news of exterminations seeped back, the ghetto’s residents formed a resistance group. “We saw ourselves as a Jewish underground whose fate was a tragic one,” wrote its young leader Mordecai Anielewicz. “For our hour had come without any sign of hope or rescue.” That hour arrived on April 19, 1943, when Nazi troops came to take the rest of the Jews away.

The sparsely armed partisans fought back but were eventually subdued by German tanks and flame­throwers. When the revolt ended on May 16, the 56,000 survivors faced summary execution or deportation to concentration and slave-labor camps.

SS Major General Jürgen Stroop took such pride in his work clearing out the ghetto that he created the Stroop Report, a leather-bound victory album whose 75 pages include a laundry list of boastful spoils, reports of daily killings and dozens of heart-­wrenching photos like that of the boy raising his hands.

This collection proved his undoing, for besides giving a face to those who died, the pictures reveal the power of photography as a documentary tool. At the subsequent Nuremburg war-crimes trials, the volume became key evidence against Stroop and resulted in his hanging near the ghetto in 1951. The Holocaust produced scores of searing images. But none had the evidentiary impact of the boy’s surrender. The child, whose identity has never been confirmed, has come to represent the face of the 6 million defenseless Jews killed by the Nazis.

See some pages from the Stroop Report

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Czesława Kwoka, Age 14, Child Victim of Auschwitz, as Shown in Her Prisoner Identification Photo Taken in December 1942

Prisoner identity photographs, taken by Wilhelm Brasse, of Czeslawa Kwoka of Poland. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Czeslawa arrived with her family at Auschwitz on Dec. 13, 1942, and died on March 12, 1943. She was 14. (Credit Auschwitz Museum, via Associated Press)

Czesława Kwoka was born in Wólka Złojecka, a small village in Poland, to a Catholic mother, Katarzyna Kwoka. Along with her mother (prisoner number 26946), Czesława Kwoka (prisoner number 26947) was deported and transported from Zamość, Poland, to Auschwitz, on 13 December 1942. On 12 March 1943, less than a month after her mother died (18 February 1943), Czesława Kwoka died at the age of 14; the circumstances of her death were not recorded. Kwoka was one of the "approximately 230,000 children and young people aged less than eighteen" among the 1,300,000 people who were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1940 to 1945.

After her arrival at Auschwitz, Czesława Kwoka was photographed for the Reich's concentration camp records, and she has been identified as one of the approximately 40,000 to 50,000 subjects of such "identity pictures" taken under duress at Auschwitz-Birkenau by Wilhelm Brasse, a young Polish inmate in his twenties (known as Auschwitz prisoner number 3444). Trained as a portrait photographer at his aunt's studio prior to the 1939 German invasion of Poland beginning World War II, Brasse and others had been ordered to photograph inmates by their Nazi captors, under dreadful camp conditions and likely imminent death if the photographers refused to comply.

These photographs that he and others were ordered to take capture each inmate "in three poses: from the front and from each side." Though ordered to destroy all photographs and their negatives, Brasse became famous after the war for having helped to rescue some of them from oblivion.

Such acts of courage as Brasse's and his colleagues enabled many like Kwoka not to become forgotten as mere bureaucratic statistics, but to be remembered as individual human beings.

50 Astonishing Color Photographs Captured the Communist Regime in Poland in the Early 1980s

Between 1952 and 1989, Poland was called the Polish People’s Republic. During these 37 years, the country was subjected to the USSR. For its inhabitants this meant being watched, censored, and deprived. The socialist system influenced every sphere of life. The socialist food distribution system barely functioned, tanks rolled along the streets. But Poles managed to circumvent rules and restrictions, and Chris Niedenthal’s camera captured their attempts.

Niedenthal’s life would make for a great film. The London-born Pole was raised and educated in the UK. He decided to come to the land of his forefathers and received citizenship in 1998. He settled in Warsaw in 1973 and photographed the grey reality of communism until 1989.

Wedding couple in the Main Square, Wroclaw, 1982.

Lech Wałęsa, Pope John Paul II and Fr. Henryk Jankowski at Wałęsa'a home in Gdańsk, 1982.

Warsaw, Solidarity supporters, martial law, 1982.

A Wroclaw boy, 1982.

"Vistula" textile factory, Cracow, 1982.

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Traffic Control in Krakow, Poland During the Nazi Occupation in 1941

Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler (8 October and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed to Germany. These included all the territories which Germany had lost under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, such as the Polish Corridor, West Prussia and Upper Silesia, but also a large area of indisputably Polish territory east of these territories, including the city of Łódź.

Some Polish institutions, including the police, were preserved in the General Government. Political activity was prohibited and only basic Polish education was allowed.

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30 Shocking Historical Photos of the Lviv Pogroms in 1941

The city of Lvov (L’viv) in southeastern Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939, under the terms of the German-Soviet Pact. There were over 200,000 Jews in Lvov in September 1939; nearly 100,000 were Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland. The Germans subsequently occupied Lvov after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Encouraged by German forces to begin violent actions against the Jewish population in Lvov, Ukrainian nationalists massacred about 4,000 Jews in early July 1941. Another pogrom, known as the Petliura Days, was organized in late July. This pogrom was named for Simon Petliura, who had organized anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine after World War I. For three days, Ukrainian militants went on a rampage through the Jewish districts of Lvov. They took groups of Jews to the Jewish cemetery and to Lunecki prison and shot them. More than 2,000 Jews were murdered and thousands more were injured.

In early November 1941, the Germans established a ghetto in the north of Lvov. German police shot thousands of elderly and sick Jews as they crossed the bridge on Peltewna Street on their way to the ghetto. In March 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews from the ghetto to the Belzec extermination camp.

By August 1942, more than 65,000 Jews had been deported from the Lvov ghetto and murdered. Thousands of Jews were sent for forced labor to the nearby Janowska camp. In early June 1943, the Germans destroyed the ghetto, killing thousands of Jews in the process. The remaining ghetto residents were sent to the Janowska forced-labor camp or deported to Belzec.

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Two Jewish Women Kiss Through a Fence in the Lodz Ghetto, Poland, ca. 1940s

These two women are probably family members saying their last goodbyes before one was deported to the Chełmno extermination camp. The photograph was taken by Mendel Grossman, who was murdered in the Holocaust in 1945.

History is such a beautiful and tragic thing, and the only thing that really captures the sheer reality of it are pictures like these. We can watch so many movies and read so many books, but a picture like this can capture so much more than any other media ever can. It’s not the same to look at posed pictures of historical figures like Churchill or Hitler or anybody else. When you see this, you can almost feel the commotion and desperation and even bravery in these women’s souls. You can tell that they would fight if they could, and it reminds us that they were just like us—with lovers, families, fears, and hope.

Mendel Grossman (27 June 1913 – 30 April 1945) was born in a Jewish Hasidic family as a son of Szmul Dawid Grossman and Haya. After the First World War his family settled in Lodz. In early youth he (as a child) began to draw portraits, as well as scenes from Jewish life. He started to take photographs, at first as an amateur, then as a professional. He himself colored pictures using aniline paints.

Mendel Grossman’s self-portrait.

In the 1930s he connected with the Jewish Theater in Lodz, picturing scenes of all the performed plays, as well as actors and actresses. He also knew numerous writers, poets, musicians and painters. Just before war's onset, Habima Theatre visited Lodz. Mendel was back stage, photographing the performances on his own initiative and directive. The results were the wonderfully inspired forerunner for all of his work in the ghettos and camps, Man in Motion, leading to the reverent archive of photos more aptly named as a collection, Motion Towards Death.

The Nazis put him in the Lodz Ghetto in 1939, where he found work as a photographer, making identification cards and documenting the work that his fellow inmates did in the ghetto. The Ghetto Government thought these photographs would convince the Nazis to treat them better because they were industrious. Grossman also hid a camera in his coat during the day, taking photographs of the living conditions in the ghetto. He took these photographs at great risk to his life, not only because the Gestapo suspected him, but also because of his weak heart.

Mendel Grossman with his camera in the Lodz Ghetto.

Mendel Grossman in his lab in the Lodz Ghetto.

Some of his photographs assisted people in identifying the graves of their loved ones. M. Grossman’s negatives are now the prepared documentation of the Holocaust. Grossman distributed many of his photographs; those he was unable to distribute, he tried to hide. In August 1944, shortly before the final liquidation of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, he hid ca. 10,000 negatives showing scenes from the Ghetto. In the ghetto, he lived together with his family at 55 Marynarskiej street.

Deported to a labor camp in Koenigs Wusterhausen, he stayed there until 16 April 1945. Ill and exhausted, he was shot by Nazis during a forced death march, still holding on to his camera.

Warsaw in the 1930s: A Look Back at Poland's Capital Just Before World War II

The city of Warsaw, capital of Poland, flanks both banks of the Vistula River. A city of 1.3 million inhabitants, Warsaw was the capital of the resurrected Polish state in 1919.

Before World War II, the city was a major center of Jewish life and culture in Poland. Warsaw's prewar Jewish population of more than 350,000 constituted about 30 percent of the city's total population. The Warsaw Jewish community was the largest in both Poland and Europe, and was the second largest in the world, second only to New York City.

Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Warsaw suffered heavy air attacks and artillery bombardment. German troops entered Warsaw on September 29, shortly after its surrender.

Take a look at the capital of Poland in the 1930s to see everyday life of Warsaw before World War II.

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14 Rare Vintage Photos of Daily Life in Galicia (Eastern Europe) From the 1920s

These photographs were taken around the 1920s when Galicia belonged to Poland. Today it is the western part of the Ukraine. All the photographs were taken in Rohatyn, Kuniuszki and in the vicinity that show you a part of the life here 90 years ago.

A Polish peasant family eating their midday bread

A family in Galicia

Farmhouse in Galicia

Galician woman

Grain winnowing

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Rising From the Ruins: Pictures of Warsaw, Poland in 1950

Most of Warsaw was destroyed by the German forces during the Second World War. The city of Warsaw was rebuilt between the 1950s and 1970 without any help from outside. Some of the landmarks had been finally reconstructed as late as the 1980s.

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45 Astonishing Vintage Photos That Capture Daily Life in the Ghetto of Warsaw in the Summer of 1941

On 2 October 1940, Ludwig Fischer, Governor of the Warsaw District in the occupied General Government of Poland, signed the order to officially create a Jewish district (ghetto) in Warsaw. It was to become the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe.

All Jewish people in Warsaw had to relocate to the area of the ghetto by 15 November 1940. The ghetto was sealed on that date. In total 113,000 gentile Poles were forced to resettle to the 'Aryan side' and were replaced by 138,000 Jews from other districts of the capital.

The ghetto reached its highest number of inhabitants in April 1941. Within its wall lived 395,000 Varsovians (residents of Warsaw) of Jewish descent, 50,000 of people resettled from the western part of the Warsaw district, 3,000 from its eastern part as well as 4,000 Jews from Germany (all resettled in early months of 1941). Altogether there were around 460,000 inhabitants. 85,000 of them children up to the age of 14.

The living conditions in the ghetto were very difficult. Density of population was extreme, there were 146,000 people per square kilometre which meant 8 to 10 people per room on average. Jews from other districts of Warsaw as well as those from other cities were allowed to bring only the absolute minimum with them – usually personal belongings and bedclothes. That meant instant poverty and great social disadvantage in comparison with original inhabitants of the ghetto's pre-war district. But in general only a very small percentage of the ghetto population had any kind of regular employment or any other source of income. Street trading became a necessity for many and anything could be a subject of exchange.

The German administration deliberately limited food supplies to the absolute minimum which caused near starvation amongst the population from the very beginning of the ghetto's existence. Smuggling food, mainly by children, from the 'Aryan side' was the only option of providing the ghetto with supplies. Malnutrition, overpopulation and lack of medical care brought another deadly factor to the daily life of the ghetto's residents – typhus.

The results were truly horrific – between October 1940 and July 1942 around 92,000 of Jewish residents of the ghetto died of starvation, diseases and cold which accounted for nearly 20% of the entire population. The dreadful conditions in the ghetto forced many Jews to escape. The German response was predictable:

"Jews who leave the quarter reserved for them without permission are liable to the death penalty. The same penalty awaits any person who knowingly gives shelter to such Jews." Taken from an official German announcement – probably on display on both sides of the ghetto wall.

These astonishing photographs below were taken by photographer Willy Georgin the summer of 1941. He was issued a pass by one of his officers and instructed to enter the enclosed ghetto and take photos of what he saw there. Accroding to Studiolum, Georg shot four rolls of films and began to shoot a fifth one when the German military police stopped him. They confiscated the film in his camera, but fortunately they did not check his pockets before escorting him out of the ghetto. Georg developed the four rolls in Warsaw and preserved the photos in the next fifty years together with his other war pictures. In the late 1980s he met Rafael Scharf from London, a researcher of Polish-Jewish studies, to whom he gave these photos and who published them in 1993 in the book In the Warsaw Ghetto: Summer 1941.

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German Police Cutting a Polish Jew’s Beard in Warsaw, October 1939

A photograph shows a member of the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst or SD) cutting a Polish Jew’s beard. It comes from a series of photos of a staged raid by the Security Police in Warsaw.

(Photo: Arthur Grimm)

Most of the 1.5 million German soldiers who participated in the attack on Poland had been socialized in the Nazi state and had also undergone ideological indoctrination in the party’s mass organizations. In late 1939, 31 percent of the solders in an average German infantry division were members of a Nazi organization. One-fifth were former Hitler Youth members, between one-third and one-half had served in the Reich Labor Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst or RAD), and all had done at least one year of military training. Members of the SS and the police, most of whom had an affinity for Nazi doctrine anyway, underwent special ideological training. Propaganda and indoctrination were used to strengthen and radicalize the already widespread resentment of Poles and Jews in German society.

After the German invasion of Poland, aggressive anti-Semitism found release in “lightning pogroms” (Blitzpogrome), during which so-called Eastern Jews (Ostjuden), in particular, were humiliated, abused, and also murdered. In addition to subjecting these Jews to drills and forced labor, the regime’s henchmen often mocked them by cutting or burning off their beards – a practice that was later continued during the military campaign against the Soviet Union.

Rare Vintage Photos of Life on the Beaches of a Pre-War Poland

Before the war, Polish beaches hosted royal families and emperors, as well as the era's icons of dance and cinema. Kings, emperors, Mata Hari, Marlena Dietrich, and Poland's own stars of the artistic and political scenes all took to the sandy coast of the Baltic sea, as well as the wilder cliffs of the Dniester river.

Here's a series of images that capture the most beautiful beaches and summer resort destinations of the past of a Pre-War Poland.

A dance class on the beach, 1930. Photo: .National Digital Archive

A Baltic beach in the 1930s. Photo: National Digital Archive

Vacationing on the beach in Gdynia-Orłowo, the 1930s. Source: a postcard from the collection of Alicja Młyńska

Sunbathers rest on the beach, August 1938. Photo: National Digital Archives

Sunbathers rest on the beach. Visible wooden promenade, wicker beach, and a ping-pong table, 1937. Photo: National Digital Archives

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