Henryk Ross

See also: Ross

Henryk Ross , Jew of Polish origin, was employed as official photographer of the Ghetto of Łódź starting from 1940. Charged with making photographs of identity and propaganda for the department of the statistics, it clandestinely took thousands of stereotypes which testify to the life of the inhabitants in the ghetto.

When Himmler, “Reichsführer” and Minister of Interior Department of IIIe Reich, gives the order, at the summer 1944, to liquidate the Ghetto of Łódź, where live still 75.000 Jews, Henryk Ross buries its collection of negative and pullings. It was going thus to safeguard most astonishing of testimonys on what were the ghettos under the Nazism. These documents are disturbing because they are confronted with a known iconography and only tragedy and they testify, in a poignant way, the decision to live, despite everything, of the Jews of this ghetto.

Hidden, but surviving, Henryk Ross escapes the deportation, whereas 95% of the inhabitants of Łódź, disappear in the camps from Auschwitz or Chelmno. After the war, and the catch of the ghetto by the Russian troops, Henryk Ross unearths its treasure, and publishes some of its stereotypes, on various occasions, (books, lawsuit of Adolf Eichmann), but much was damaged or lost. Itself emigrates in Israel in 1950 and it dies there in 1991.

Bibliography and exposure

part of the photographs were exposed, in January and February 2005, at the “Regional center of cultural activity” (CRAC) of Valence in the Drome, under the title “Documents new of the ghetto of Łódź”.
Łódź Ghetto Album , photographs of Henryk Ross, text (English) of Thomas Weber. Chris Boot, 56 €.

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