The photo above, and mnay others in the coming years, were taken by a Jewish photographer, Mendel Grossman. Over the next years, he would document the atrocities of the Germans in the Lodz Ghetto, knowing that if he was found out, he would be immediately executed.
When the Germans finally learned of his activities during the final liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto, Mendel was sent to the Konigs Wusterhausen labour camp, in the Reich where he secretly continued photographing, but not developing and printing.
When, the war front advanced and came closer, and the prisoners of the camp were taken out on the death march, Grossman collapsed and died with his camera on him. The negatives of his photographs hidden by him in the ghetto, were found by Mendel’s sister and sent to Israel, but most of them were lost during the War of Independence, when Egyptian troops captured the Nitzanim kibbutz.
One of Mendel’s closest friends Nahman Zonabend remained in the Lodz ghetto until its liberation. Although the Nazis kept him under constant surveillance, he succeeded in saving the archives of the Judenrat, and he concealed the documentary treasure, including some of Mendel’s photographs, at the bottom of a well. After the war this material was taken out of Poland. The archives were collected and are now housed in the Museum of Holocaust and Resistance at the Ghetto Fighters House in Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot Israel.
It is inspiring to learn about ordinary people, like Mendel Grossman, who respond to crisis with such courage and character. It makes me yearn to travel to Israel to see his surviving photos and pay him homage.