{"id":6894,"date":"2022-07-20T15:32:08","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T15:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6894"},"modified":"2022-07-21T16:21:55","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T16:21:55","slug":"hirsch-6-essay-ross-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6894","title":{"rendered":"Photography and the Holocaust: Then &#038; Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6312\">Return to theme table of content <\/a><a id=\"top\"><\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">Return to VJIC table of content<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Thread # 6<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u00a0Jewish Photographic Perspectives, Part 3<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u00a0Henryk Ross: The \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Ghetto Photographs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a9 Robert Hirsch 2022<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lightresearch.net\"><strong>www.lightresearch.net<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<em>VASA Journal on Images and Culture<\/em> (<em>VJIC<\/em>),<br \/>\nTheme Editor and Writer<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Those are my principles and if you don\u2019t like <\/em><em>them \u2026<br \/>\nwell, I have others<\/em>.<br \/>\nGroucho Marks<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/731793064?h=eb8f752b2a\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This second of two essays continues to explore the photographic activities of Henryk Ross (1910-1991) who documented living inside the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Ghetto (pronounced \u201cLawch\u201d) from 1940 to 1944. Officially, Ross worked for the Statistics Department of the ghetto\u2019s Jewish Administration, photographing the ghetto\u2019s Jewish inhabitants for identification cards and for use in Nazi propaganda. When Ross was not engaged in his bureaucratic capacity, he risked his unique privileges and his life to photograph the reality of daily ghetto existence. Ross understood the importance of photographically documenting the Nazi\u2019s genocide to repudiate those who would not believe or who would deny the Shoah. Ross\u2019s photographs lay bare the issues regarding leadership, social class, forced labor, starvation, and the obliteration of religious institutions in a controlled environment where death was the destination.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">Notes: Additional information about some of the images can be found at the end of this essay. Images have been minimally adjusted to facilitate online viewing, but have not been overtly edited from their source. There has been confusion regarding who has made many of the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Ghetto photographs. A number of Ross\u2019s photographs have been attributed to Mendel Grossman although the negatives are in the Ross archive. I believe that possession of negatives is generally the best method of attribution even though some of Ross\u2019s images survive without the negatives, which is not surprising given the history that follows. Also, bear in mind that Grossman\u2019s images were published posthumously without his input. Regardless of the maker, what is essential is their existence as visual proof of the German extermination of the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Ghetto Jews.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Through the eyes of a few we can see many.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>A Paradox Revealed in Images:<br \/>\nTenuous Privilege and Covert Resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6971\" style=\"width: 206px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6971\" class=\"wp-image-6971 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.1_Ross_Police-Posing-196x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.1_Ross_Police-Posing-196x300.jpg 196w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.1_Ross_Police-Posing-98x150.jpg 98w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.1_Ross_Police-Posing.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6971\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.1 Henryk Ross. \u0141\u00f3d\u017a ghetto policemen posing for Ross\u2019s camera, 1941\u20141942. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Ross\u2019s photographs are a study in opposites, for they give the illusion that ghetto conditions were not so terrible, seemingly making the body of his effort disturbing. However, they are unrepresentative and stand in stark contrast to the reality of the majority of the ghetto inmates. They depict a tiny minority of the ghetto prisoners\u2014the more privileged Judenrats and their children who lived under better conditions. It is unclear why Ross took these pictures or the relationship he had with the people depicted. Was he compensated to take pictures? Was he part of the elite? Or did he want to commemorate these commonplace social interactions as a rebuke against the horror? Such intimate photographs, having the fa\u00e7ade of classic family snapshots, have led some to question whether Ross exaggerated the danger he faced from the Jewish police, whom he portrayed both as affable, community protectors, and those who got extra rations. Did Ross want to distance himself from the Jewish Council and make himself appear part of the underground struggle or are we seeing the intricacy of the human survival instinct? Furthermore, many of Ross\u2019s depictions of Chaim Rumkowski (Head of Judenrat,) contradict the way most Holocaust centers have presented him\u2014as an archetypal, autocratic traitor.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6972\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6972\" class=\"wp-image-6972 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.2_Ross_Police-extra-food.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"406\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.2_Ross_Police-extra-food.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.2_Ross_Police-extra-food-300x203.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.2_Ross_Police-extra-food-150x102.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6972\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.2 Henryk Ross. \u0141\u00f3d\u017a ghetto police men receiving extra rations, 1941\u20141944. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6973\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6973\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6973\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.3_Ross_AgedSick-Deported-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.3_Ross_AgedSick-Deported-.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.3_Ross_AgedSick-Deported--300x215.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.3_Ross_AgedSick-Deported--150x108.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6973\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.3 Henryk Ross. Aged and sick \u0141\u00f3d\u017a ghetto residents being deportation, circa 1942. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6974\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6974\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6974\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.4_Ross_Hospital-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"786\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.4_Ross_Hospital-.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.4_Ross_Hospital--229x300.jpg 229w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.4_Ross_Hospital--115x150.jpg 115w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6974\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.4 Henryk Ross. People trying to escape out of a hospital window as Jewish ghetto police round them up for deportation, circa 1942. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6975\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6975\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6975\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.5_Ross_Deportation-Boxcar.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"441\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.5_Ross_Deportation-Boxcar.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.5_Ross_Deportation-Boxcar-300x221.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.5_Ross_Deportation-Boxcar-150x110.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6975\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.5 Henryk Ross. \u0141\u00f3d\u017a ghetto Jewish police escorting residents for deportation, circa 1942\u20141944. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6976\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6976\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6976\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.6_Ross_Escorting.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"737\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.6_Ross_Escorting.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.6_Ross_Escorting-244x300.jpg 244w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.6_Ross_Escorting-122x150.jpg 122w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6976\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.6 Henryk Ross. \u0141\u00f3d\u017a ghetto Jewish police (wearing Star of David arm bands) loading fellow residents into a boxcar bound for death camp, circa 1942\u2013-1944. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6977\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6977\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6977\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.7_Ross_Food-Pailsdishes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"391\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.7_Ross_Food-Pailsdishes.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.7_Ross_Food-Pailsdishes-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.7_Ross_Food-Pailsdishes-150x98.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6977\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.7 Henryk Ross. Food pails and dishes left by deported \u0141\u00f3d\u017a ghetto prisoners bound for a death camp, 1944. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>On the other hand, Ross photographed bewildering ghetto scenes such as a childhood version of \u201ccops and robbers,\u201d which was modified to \u201cNazis and Jews\u201d or \u201cghetto policemen and Jews.\u201d Here, children dressed up as SS-men or ghetto policemen and rounded up their playmates for deportation. Some find this confounding. However, in retrospect, it can be noted that games assist children in learning about their environments. In that sense, this \u201cBizarro World\u201d game, where everything is reversed, may have helped the children cope with the veracity of their ghetto existence. This picture raises many questions: Why did the Ross record this scene? What were the boys thinking when playing this game? Where did they get the uniform? What did adults think when seeing the children play? Is this different from post-World War II American children playing cowboys and Indians?<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref\">[i]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6978\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6978\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6978\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.8_Ross_Playing-Ghetto-Policeman-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.8_Ross_Playing-Ghetto-Policeman-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.8_Ross_Playing-Ghetto-Policeman-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.8_Ross_Playing-Ghetto-Policeman.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6978\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.8 Henryk Ross. Playing as Ghetto Policeman, 1943. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Such seemingly perplexing images were not made public until 1997 \u2013 six years after Ross\u2019s death \u2013 when his son made his collection accessible. Such imagery explains why Ross\u2019s archive was harshly judged for many years and why Holocaust institutions were not interested in his collection, with its alternative renditions of ghetto culture and leadership. His son recalled:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>He tried to get his pictures published in the 1950s, but no one wanted to know. The iconic pictures of the Holocaust were of atrocities, horrors. The message of these pictures is not so straightforward.<\/em><a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref\">[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6979\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6979\" class=\"wp-image-6979 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.9_Ross_Dancing.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"416\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.9_Ross_Dancing.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.9_Ross_Dancing-300x208.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.9_Ross_Dancing-150x104.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6979\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.9 Henryk Ross. Ghetto Elite Dancing, 1943. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Towards the end of his life, Ross revisited his ghetto photographs. He made a scrapbook of contact sheet prints that he arranged in rows, not in sequence, structuring the images out of their original time and place. At first this seems to be a puzzling way to edit.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6980\" style=\"width: 248px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6980\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6980\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.10-Ross_Folio-page-1-238x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"238\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.10-Ross_Folio-page-1-238x300.jpg 238w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.10-Ross_Folio-page-1-119x150.jpg 119w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.10-Ross_Folio-page-1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 238px) 100vw, 238px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6980\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.10 Henryk Ross. \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Ghetto Folio, page 1, 1940\u20141945; assembled 1962\u20141987. 11 x 8 9\/16 inches. Gelatin silver prints. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>However, Ross\u2019s timeline is actually more like real life: complicated, not a straight story, people and places weave in and out and go backward and forward in time. Ross\u2019s arrangement is an accurate representation of the chaotic way he had to make these photographs. His distinctive approach takes into account the random and unexpected, including the water damage his buried negatives suffered, which altered how he later came to view his original intentions. Once again this demonstrates how photographs do not necessarily follow a coherent path and are often idiosyncratic and subject to change over time. We also see how memory, especially of traumatic events, can play an enormous role in how we recall and understand the events that shape our lives. This allows everyday stories, within the larger story, to take on a significance that was buried beneath the surface, just like Ross\u2019s impaired negatives.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Eichmann Trial: Time Shifts Understanding <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ross\u2019s artless photographs, often made without looking through a viewfinder, or while peering through cracks, imbues them with a sense of resolve, acting as reminders of the long ugly history of antisemitism that dates back to ancient Greece. They portray the breadth and depth of Jewish ghetto life through the eyes of a professional Jewish photographer. Made under the terrifying circumstances, his visual authentication stands in defiance of the Nazis\u2019 goal of annihilating the Jewish people, culture, and history that is foundational to western and Mideastern civilizations.<\/p>\n<p>An exorcism of passing time was necessary before the value of Ross\u2019s contradictory imagery became apparent. Then, like smoldering ashes, they came roaring back. This arising led to Ross\u2019s harrowing testimony and his photographs being used as evidence in the 1961 Jerusalem trial of SS officer Adolf Eichmann, the implementer of the Final Solution.<a href=\"#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref\">[iii]<\/a> It was the first time in 2,000 years that the Jewish people sat in judgment of someone who had tried to destroy them. Jews did not have plead for justice to be done, which usually fell upon deaf ears. Instead, they got to sit in judgment. It also lifted the toxic, shadowy veil of concealment, silence, and shame surrounding the trauma of the survivors and their decedents. After the war, in his testimony at the Eichmann trial, Henryk Ross described the circumstances under which he took the photographs.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6981\" style=\"width: 218px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6981\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6981\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.11_Unknown_Ross_Testifies-208x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"208\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.11_Unknown_Ross_Testifies-208x300.jpg 208w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.11_Unknown_Ross_Testifies-104x150.jpg 104w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.11_Unknown_Ross_Testifies.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 208px) 100vw, 208px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6981\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.11 Unknown photographer. Henryk Ross testifying in the trial of Adolf Eichmann at the Jerusalem District Court, May 2, 1961. Ghetto Fighters\u2019 House Archives (Itzhak Katzenelson Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum, Documentation and Study Center), Western Galilee, Israel is the world\u2019s first museum commemorating the Holocaust and Jewish heroism.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>On one occasion, when people with whom I was acquainted worked at the railway station of Radegast, which was outside the ghetto but linked to it, and where trains destined for Auschwitz were standing \u2013 on one occasion I managed to get into the railway station in the guise of a cleaner. My friends shut me into a cement storeroom. I was there from six in the morning until seven in the evening, until the Germans went away and the transport departed. I watched as the transport left. I heard shouts. I saw the beatings. I saw how they were shooting at them, how they were murdering them, those who refused. Through a hole in a board of the wall of the storeroom I took several pictures<\/em>.<a href=\"#_edn4\" name=\"_ednref\">[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Eichmann trial was a great awakening for numerous people \u2014 including many Israelis and this writer \u2014 who learned the details of the Holocaust for the first time. The trial gave the world the names, faces, and histories of the Holocaust\u2019s victims, asserting their human dimension. After the trial more survivors decided they did not want to be mere creatures who were acted upon. Instead, they took up personal agency and began telling their stories. It also marked the expansion of investigative Holocaust scholarship, which in turn broadened how Ross\u2019s photographs were appraised. Finally, it showed the importance of the existence of the state of Israel. Before the re-establishment of Israel, Jews were in a constant state of Exodus and never felt truly welcome anywhere else. Had there been a Jewish state, it could have provided a refuge, reminding us that history is a mirror against which we view and define the present. With the benefit of reflection, Ross acted as a photo-journalist employing his photographs as witnesses, documenting what you would have seen had you been there and serving as a memory aide. General Eisenhower was so shocked when he saw a liberated concentration camp that he ordered photographs and films to be made to verify the nauseating horrors, thinking people would not otherwise believe it. Unfortunately, with the rise of Holocaust denial, disinformation, and inversion, Eisenhower was right. As Ross later stated:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>Just before the closure of the ghetto (1944) I buried my negatives in the ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy, namely the total elimination of the Jews from \u0141\u00f3d\u017a by the Nazi executioners. I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish Jewry. I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom<\/em>.<a href=\"#_edn5\" name=\"_ednref\">[v]<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6982\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6982\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6982\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.12_AP_Eisenhower_Death-Camp.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"488\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.12_AP_Eisenhower_Death-Camp.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.12_AP_Eisenhower_Death-Camp-300x244.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.12_AP_Eisenhower_Death-Camp-150x122.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6982\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.12 12th April 1945: In the centre with hands on his hips, General Dwight D Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander looks at the piles of bodies belonging to Russian and Polish prisoners shot by the Germans in a camp at Ohrdruf, Germany. (Photo by Keystone\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The conditions under which Ross made his pictures are unnerving because they call into focus the side of human nature many do not want to acknowledge: that economic and social status in the ghetto was similar to pre-ghetto life. These circumstances were compounded by the burden of survivor guilt, which resulted in many people not wanting to talk about what happened, believing the finest people perished.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6983\" style=\"width: 206px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6983\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6983\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.13_Ross_Torah-ruined-Synagogue--196x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.13_Ross_Torah-ruined-Synagogue--196x300.jpg 196w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.13_Ross_Torah-ruined-Synagogue--98x150.jpg 98w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.13_Ross_Torah-ruined-Synagogue-.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6983\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.13 Henryk Ross. Man who saved the Torah from the ruins of the synagogue on Wolborska Street, 1939\u2013-1940. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>At the conclusion of <em>Night<\/em> (1960), an autobiographical account of surviving the German death camps, Elie Wiesel wrote: \u201cFor in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences,\u201d Wiesel draws the conclusion that \u201cthe best of us died.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn6\" name=\"_ednref\">[vi]<\/a> However, reality is less noble. Everyone in the sights of the sadistic Nazi death cult faced similar dilemmas and under such stress human solidarity can diminish. Ross himself was traumatized. Upon liberation he weighed only 84 pounds\/38 kilograms and never really found solid footing after the Shoah.<a href=\"#_edn7\" name=\"_ednref\">[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Like a revolving door of goodness and horror, the duality of Ross\u2019s disconcerting photographs juxtaposes beauty and hope in the mist of calamity and despair. Now we can consider them a form of social photographic v\u00e9rit\u00e9, which chronicled people in everyday situations under dire and nerve-racking conditions when they were trying to live with the uncertainty of certainty. Although Ross made his photographs in daylight, they are all about a culture vanishing from the light into pitch darkness. Like unfixed photographic prints, they disappear, yet make a case against the fatalism that attempted to erase Jewish culture from the collective memory. Rather than succumbing to despair in a desperate situation beyond his control, Ross practiced courageous resistance in the face of deadly, overwhelming odds.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6993\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6993\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6993\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.14-Henryk-Ross_Young-child.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"736\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.14-Henryk-Ross_Young-child.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.14-Henryk-Ross_Young-child-245x300.jpg 245w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.14-Henryk-Ross_Young-child-122x150.jpg 122w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6993\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.14 Henryk Ross. A young child smiling, 1940\u20141944. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Either Or: A Matter of Choice<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is sanctimonious to think people lived or died solely based on their choices, when the entire structure of the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a environment was designed for one purpose: to cause death&#8230; In a situation that consumed so many lives, impossible decisions had to be made\u2014there was no space for the luxury of heroism. All the inmates were faced with what American scholar and Holocaust analyst Lawrence Langer has called \u201cchoiceless choice.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn8\" name=\"_ednref\">[viii]<\/a> Although Ross shared no responsibility for the situation, he made the fitting decision to survive while defying German orders. Ross\u2019s work shows human agency in what would otherwise only be an abstract numerical horror story. This makes Ross an \u201cException,\u201d a nonconformist, a risk taker, whose actions can facilitate change. His archive is like an iceberg. Its cumulative power lays below the surface as an anthology of collective trauma. As the German philosopher Hannah Arendt insisted, moral choice exists, even under totalitarianism, and that choice has political consequences even when the chooser is politically powerless:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>For the lesson of [resistance to the Holocaust] is simple and within everybody\u2019s grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that \u201cit could happen\u201d in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation<\/em>.<a href=\"#_edn9\" name=\"_ednref\">[ix]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the sheer number of Ross\u2019s photographs offers the most diverse view of contemporaneous responses to the Shoah by depicting the human dance of forced collaboration and simultaneous active resistance. What we witness is how ghetto life gets reduced, reduced, and reduced until it finally disappears completely. Bearing witness to the collapse of German civilization is essential, making visible what is hard but necessary to see. Witnessing requires seeing another\u2019s pain as no different from our own.<a href=\"#_edn10\" name=\"_ednref\">[x]<\/a> The kind of pain Ross recorded was as blinding as pointing his camera into the sun. These photographs, walking the tightrope between presence and absence, do not protect us from their grief or solve the contempt for life that produced them. This is precisely why one needs to learn to examine problems when you really want to look away. We may prefer to run away and weep, but the willingness to see opens one to the process of discovery, which is the prologue to action.<\/p>\n<p>This is what makes Ross\u2019s work compelling, for the stories his photographs tell are like life itself: they are often about circumstances we cannot comprehend. Stories are never neutral. Hence the role of a storyteller is to decide what to include and exclude; what to highlight and what to downplay. A good storyteller distills the complex situations into viable and significant segments that guide our understanding of cultural situations. In this sense, Ross is an <em>alternativ<\/em>e story-telling photographer who generated <em>counter-images<\/em> to those of the oppressor, which can be perceived from multiple perspectives.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, Ross\u2019s work affords an insiders point of view, thus providing the missing, active resistance portion to the classic Holocaust narrative based on German and Allied archives with their emphasis on passive enslavement and liberation of the European Jews. The second is how the asymmetry of time invites chance. Entropy tends to increase over time, in this case, it transformed some of the buried, water damaged negatives into supercharged psychological containers of lost time and place. Ross must have known that whatever would become of his efforts was unpredictable, yet he chose to tell his story in hope of making a difference in a future in which he might not exist. His body of work exemplifies why we need to take in other people\u2019s traumatic stories. In a mythical sense there is a persuasive #MeToo element to Ross\u2019s over-arching story, which shows how totalitarian regimes can destroy those without power and act unrepentant. In contrast, Ross expresses the range of ways that the vulnerable can defend themselves against tyranny and become unexpectedly strong in the end. Finally, every verbal and written description of the Holocaust is deficient in some way of conveying the cruel depths of hardship, humiliation, and constant terror people experienced in Shoah, thus making images that can communicate to us on a different internal wavelength a valuable addition when attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6985\" style=\"width: 209px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6985\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6985\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.15_Ross_Two-Girls-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.15_Ross_Two-Girls-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.15_Ross_Two-Girls-100x150.jpg 100w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.15_Ross_Two-Girls.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6985\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.15 Henryk Ross. Two Girls, 1941\u20141944. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Ross\u2019s compendium exhibits how an imperfect person can accomplish remarkable things and that human behavior is rarely one thing or another, but rather a fusion of diverse and often contradictory actions. Ross\u2019s photographs serve as a humanistic expression of rebellious disobedience. In total they are an affirmation of enduring love for those who he shared ghetto life with \u2013 proof that one\u2019s own actions matter even when everything else appears lost. In the end, it is a stark reassessment that remembrance without concrete individualistic action does not honor the social responsibility aspect of the Jewish precept \u201ctikkun olam\u201d \u2013 trying to repair and heal a bloody and beautiful world.<a href=\"#_edn11\" name=\"_ednref\">[xi]<\/a> To conclude, ask yourself: What would you have done in Ross\u2019s situation? The choices we make define who we are\u2026.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Afterword: Putin Invades the Ukraine &amp; Lies Become Truth<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u201cThe past was erased, the erasure was forgotten,<br \/>\nthe lie became the truth.\u201d<br \/>\nGeorge Orwell, <em>1984<\/em><\/p>\n<p>During the Holocaust, an estimated 1.2 to 1.4 million Ukrainian Jews were slaughtered. Henryk Ross\u2019s photographs demonstrate a central political lesson of the 1930s: democracies cannot win peace at the expense of the freedom of others, and the triumph of nefarious tormentors depends on whether their prey psychologically surrenders or resists. This point is self-evident, as in the course of writing this essay, Russia has aggressively invaded the Ukraine. Kleptocratic dictator Vladimir Putin is utilizing brutal, authoritarian playbook tactics that include: demonizing Others, civilian warfare, and suppression that include false flags, Double Speak, inversion of facts, and rewriting history to erase Ukraine\u2019s statehood.<a href=\"#_edn12\" name=\"_ednref\">[xii]<\/a> By blanketing the public sphere with propaganda,<a href=\"#_edn13\" name=\"_ednref\">[xiii]<\/a> Putin makes people afraid to speak with one another. This sense of fear makes people feel isolated and much less likely to counterattack. Hannah Arendt referred to widespread loneliness as an underlying condition for totalitarianism. Punishing free dialogue allows Putin to make preposterous claims, such as using the pretext of \u201cde-Nazification\u201d for his aggression and forbidding people to declare his actions an act of war. Accusing the Ukrainians of being Nazis and drug addicts, Putin claimed his invasion was \u201cto protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime\u201d and that Russian society needed a \u201cself-purification\u201d from the pro-Western \u201cscum and traitors\u201d in its midst.<\/p>\n<p>This is the same kind of Big Lie propagated about Israel by Palestinian terrorist leader Yasser Arafat after he made common cause with the Soviet Union to rewrite history, demonize the Jewish state, and subvert the West by twisting its collective mind and destroying its moral compass. China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping, wants to erase Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Uyghurs, just as BDS founders have publicly stated that their goal is to erase Israel, a country that equals 1\/100 of one percent of the world\u2019s surface (Israel doesn\u2019t even appear on maps in most Arab and Muslim countries).<a href=\"#_edn14\" name=\"_ednref\">[xiv]<\/a> The leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, published his doctoral thesis <em>The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism<\/em> (1984) while attending Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. Abbas outrageously claimed that Zionists were \u201cfundamental partners\u201d with the Nazis and equally responsible for the Holocaust in order to encourage Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Such anti-Zionism is a dog whistle for antisemitism that transposes Jews into racist Nazis who practice apartheid, use their space lasers to start wild fires, and deserve to be universally boycotted. This type of libel also occurs in the art world. A recent example is 15th Documenta (2022), which was curated by an Indonesian collective (Ruangrupa) whose members displayed antisemitic works and accused Israel of apartheid, resulting in resignation of the show\u2019s managing director Sabine Schormann. Ruangrupa claimed that there were Jewish Israeli artists among the 1,500 participants, but did not identify them.<a href=\"#_edn15\" name=\"_ednref\">[xv]<\/a> Within this context, Ross\u2019s photographs are a reminder of what has changed and what has remained the same and how much of the world continues to see Jews as not being like everyone else.<a href=\"#_edn16\" name=\"_ednref\">[xvi]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Volodymyr Zelensky: Ukraine\u2019s Jewish President<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Putin\u2019s bombs have fallen close to the site of Babyn Yar where the Nazis killed tens of thousands of Jews in one of the worst single massacres of the Holocaust. This was carried out with the active assistance of Ukrainians, who have a long, ugly history of antisemitism and who also made up a large number of concentration camp guards.<a href=\"#_edn17\" name=\"_ednref\">[xvii]<\/a> However, the Ukraine now has a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who emotionally asked, \u201cWhat is the point of saying \u2018never again\u2019 for 80 years if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On March 2, 2022, in a Hebrew-language post to his Facebook page, President Zelensky urged Jewish people around the world to speak up, as he accused Russia of seeking to \u201cerase\u201d Ukrainians, their country, and their history: \u201cI am now addressing all the Jews of the world. Don\u2019t you see what is happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world not remain silent right now. Nazism is born in silence. So shout about killings of civilians. Shout about the murders of Ukrainians.\u201d Zelensky also referred to a Russian missile strike the day before that hit a television broadcast building near the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial site, causing damage to the surrounding area. \u201cWe all were bombed last night in Kyiv, and we all died again at Babyn Yar from the missile attack, even though the world pledges \u2018Never again,\u2019\u201d he wrote. \u201cYou are killing the victims of the Holocaust again,\u201d he wrote.<a href=\"#_edn18\" name=\"_ednref\">[xviii]<\/a> Zelensky addressed the Israeli Knesset on March 22, 2022 by sharing a quote from former Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, who was born in Kyiv: \u201cWe intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn19\" name=\"_ednref\">[xix]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_6986\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6986\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6986\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.16_NYT-AD_Shoah-MuseumsUkraine-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1428\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.16_NYT-AD_Shoah-MuseumsUkraine-.jpg 800w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.16_NYT-AD_Shoah-MuseumsUkraine--168x300.jpg 168w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.16_NYT-AD_Shoah-MuseumsUkraine--574x1024.jpg 574w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.16_NYT-AD_Shoah-MuseumsUkraine--84x150.jpg 84w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.16_NYT-AD_Shoah-MuseumsUkraine--768x1371.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6986\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.16 Statement by [Holocaust] museums on the war crimes committed in Ukraine. Advertisement in The New York Times, Sunday, April 10, 2022.<\/p><\/div>On April 5, 2022 Zelensky declared that, when the war is finally over, Ukraine would emerge from the rubble a \u201cbig Israel.\u201d What he acknowledged was that the war would never really be over, that Ukraine would be on a permanent war footing, just like Israel.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6987\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6987\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6987\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.17_Unknown_Babi-Yar-Ravine--300x239.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.17_Unknown_Babi-Yar-Ravine--300x239.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.17_Unknown_Babi-Yar-Ravine--150x120.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.17_Unknown_Babi-Yar-Ravine-.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6987\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.17 Unknown Russian photographer. Babi Yar Ravine, northwest of Kiev, Ukraine where the advancing Red Army unearthed the bodies of 14,000 civilians killed by the Nazis, 1944.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>He views Ukraine\u2019s neighbors the same way Jewish Israelis have been forced to view its neighbors: As enemies who seek their erasure. He made it clear that Ukraine would never again rely on anyone else for its security: not the West, not the international community, not the so-called liberal order. The role of the government would be, like Israel, performing the first and foremost role of a free government: answering to the needs of its people and controlling its own destiny.<a href=\"#_edn20\" name=\"_ednref\">[xx]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As a final photographic point, it should be noted that Western support of Ukraine has initially been buttressed by intense media coverage of the carnage and destruction (with the exception of Fox News), featuring digital photographic images and videos captured and circulated by Ukrainian civilians directly affected by Putin\u2019s military\u2019s barbaric war crimes.<a href=\"#_edn21\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxi]<\/a> How long this will continue is doubtful as the media will likely lose interest and move on to a new crisis. Another bitter irony: Germany, who once committed war crimes in Ukraine, has been subsidizing Russia for decades with its dependence on Russian gas. Additionally, Russia has a horrid history of violent antisemitism going back to pogroms beginning in 1881 in Elisavetgrad in the Ukraine. From 1905 onwards the pogroms were primarily organized by the Union of the Russian People, which had government backing. From 1905-1909 pogroms took place in over 184 cities. From these pogroms alone there were an estimated 50,000 victims.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u201cThe ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between the true and the false (i.e., the standards of thought) <\/em><br \/>\n<em>no longer exist.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Hanna Arendt<br \/>\n<em>The Origins of Totalitarianism<\/em>, 1951, XXXIII<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6988\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6988\" class=\"wp-image-6988 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.18_Maloletka_Mass-Grave.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"476\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.18_Maloletka_Mass-Grave.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.18_Maloletka_Mass-Grave-300x238.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.18_Maloletka_Mass-Grave-150x119.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6988\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.18 \u00a9 Evgeniy Maloletka. Bodies are placed into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6989\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6989\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6989\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.19_Addario_Perebyinis-family.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.19_Addario_Perebyinis-family.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.19_Addario_Perebyinis-family-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.19_Addario_Perebyinis-family-150x100.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6989\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.19 \u00a9 Lynsey Addario. Family killed by Russian mortar fire in the Ukraine, March 6, 2022.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_6990\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6990\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6990\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web-300x210.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web-150x105.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web-768x538.jpg 768w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web.jpg 833w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6990\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.20 \u00a9 James Nachtwey. Nina, Found Dead, 2022.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In terms of ethics, we seek rational explanations for the actions of such bloodthirsty, power-hungry people, but there really are not any because there is no escaping the madness and the meanness of this world, essentially because so many humans tragically embrace the emotional tribalism that authoritarian dictatorships pedal over pluralist democracy, the freedom to define oneself, as championed by leaders like Zelensky.<a href=\"#_edn22\" name=\"_ednref\">[xxii]<\/a> It is a reminder that human history never ends, it just rematerializes with aggressive and deadly aggrandizement, as the desire for power over others continues to be an anthropological constant.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/731789388?h=8837a9c961\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Acknowledgements<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This ongoing project is flexible and subject to revision as it progresses.<br \/>\nFeedback and suggestions are welcome.<br \/>\nResearch assistance by Ruby Merritt<br \/>\nNoteworthy thanks to Lisa Murray-Roselli for her editing expertise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This theme is supported by the following organizations and individuals:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>VASA, Vienna, Austria: Roberto Muffoletto, Director<br \/>\nCEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY USA: Claire Legget, Interim Director<br \/>\nGalicia Jewish Museum, Krak\u00f3w, Poland: Tomasz Strug, Deputy Director and Chief Curator<br \/>\nHolocaust Resource Center of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA: Elizabeth Schram, Director<br \/>\nJewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA: Katie Wzontek, Cultural Arts Director<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6991\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6991\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6991\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.21_Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder_The-Triumph-of-Death-300x214.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"214\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.21_Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder_The-Triumph-of-Death-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.21_Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder_The-Triumph-of-Death-150x107.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.21_Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder_The-Triumph-of-Death.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6991\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.21 Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Triumph of Death, 1562\u20141563. 46 x 64 inches, Oil on panel. Museo Nacional Del Prado, Madrid, Spain.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Endnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn1\">[i]<\/a> See: Dr. Jib Fowles in \u201cMedia Violence: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Juvenile &#8230;,\u201d Volume 4 By United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice, 58-66. https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=2ThN6gj2_cIC&amp;pg=PA58&amp;lpg=PA58&amp;dq=Dr.+Jib+Fowles,+houston&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=gJHM_Ku9VL&amp;sig=ACfU3U2wtvkUW9xGjXcChcb1V9Q93-tXjQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiA64vL0Nz2AhWCkYkEHQTdBtIQ6AF6BAgEEAM#v=onepage&amp;q=Dr.%20Jib%20Fowles%2C%20houston&amp;f=false<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn2\"><u>[ii]<\/u><\/a> Janina Struk, author of <em>Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence<\/em> (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), quoted in Rose George, <em>The Ghetto, Less Gritty<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guiltandpleasure.com\/index.php?site=rebootgp&amp;page=gp_article&amp;id=121%CA\">www.guiltandpleasure.com\/index.php?site=rebootgp&amp;page=gp_article&amp;id=121<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn3\">[iii]<\/a> Isabel Kershner, \u201cNazi Tapes Provide a Chilling Sequel to the Eichmann Trial,\u201d <em>The New York Times<\/em>, July 4, 2022, www.nytimes.com\/2022\/07\/04\/world\/middleeast\/adolf-eichmann-documentary-israel.html?searchResultPosition=1<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn4\">[iv]<\/a> Henryk Ross, cited in <em>Henryk Ross:<\/em> <em>\u0141\u00f3d\u017a Ghetto Album<\/em>, 155.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn5\">[v]<\/a> Henryk Ross, cited in <em>Henryk Ross:<\/em> <em>\u0141\u00f3d\u017a Ghetto Album<\/em>, 27.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn6\">[vi]<\/a> Originally written in Yiddish, it was edited for a postwar English speaking audience and transformed from an infuriated historical account into a creative expression as told by a sincere teenager who was overwhelmed with survivor\u2019s guilt and the absence of god.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn7\">[vii]<\/a> Just like hyenas, humans are top predatory animals who at times cooperate and build societies and other times destroy them. See: Ashley Ward. <em>The Social Lives of Animals<\/em> (New York: Basic Books, 2022).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn8\">[viii]<\/a> Lawrence L. Langer. \u201cThe Dilemma of Choice in the Deathcamps,\u201d <em>Centerpoint: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies<\/em>, vol. 4, no. 1 (1980), 53\u201359; reprinted in John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum, (eds.), <em>Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications<\/em> (New York: Paragon House, 1989), pp. 222\u2013232.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn9\">[ix]<\/a> Hannah Arendt. <em>Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil<\/em>, (New York: Viking press, 1963), 233.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn10\">[x]<\/a> See: Susan Sontag. <em>Regarding the Pain of Others<\/em> (New York: Picador \u2013 Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2004.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn11\">[xi]<\/a> See: My Jewish Learning. \u201cTikkun Olam: Repairing the World.\u201d This phrase with kabbalistic roots has come to connote social justice. www.myjewishlearning.com\/article\/tikkun-olam-repairing-the-world\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn12\">[xii]<\/a> Antisemitic falsehoods have been a core element of communist ideology and disinformation. See: Juliana Geran Pilon, \u201cPutin\u2019s \u2018De-Nazification\u2019 Claim Began With Marx and Stalin,\u201d www.wsj.com\/articles\/putins-de-nazification-claim-began-with-marx-and-stalin-world-imperialism-russia-soviets-communism-11647032625?mod=opinion_lead_pos6<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn13\">[xiii]<\/a> Anton Troianovski, \u201cPutin Aims to Shape a New Generation of Supporters, Through Schools,\u201d July 16, 2022, www.nytimes.com\/2022\/07\/16\/world\/europe\/russia-putin-schools-propaganda-indoctrination.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn14\">[xiv]<\/a> Melaine Phillips, \u201cFor the Jews, history repeats itself in Ukraine,\u201d Jewish News Syndicate, March 3, 2022, www.jns.org\/opinion\/for-the-jews-history-repeats-itself-in-ukraine\/?utm_source=The+Daily+Syndicate&amp;utm_campaign=4a7c96baf1-Daily+Syndicate+02-27-22+%28new%29_COPY_01&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_8583953730-4a7c96baf1-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&amp;ct=t%28Daily+Syndicate+02-27-22+%28new%29_COPY_01%29<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn15\">[xv]<\/a> Alex Greenberger. \u201cDocumenta Head Is Out Amid Anti-Semitism Controversies and Pressure from German Politicians,\u201d <em>ARTnews<\/em>, July 16, 2022, www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/documenta-sabine-schormann-departure-antisemitism-controversies-1234634366\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn16\">[xvi]<\/a> In 2021, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tabulated 2,717 antisemitic incidents throughout the United States. This is a 34% increase from the 2,026 incidents in 2020. See: www.adl.org\/audit2021<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn17\">[xvii]<\/a> Cnaan Liphshiz. \u201cIn Israel, some Holocaust survivors from Ukraine feel ambivalent about their war-torn country of birth,\u201d <em>Jewish Telegraphic Agency<\/em>, April 28, 2022, www.jta.org\/2022\/04\/28\/global\/in-israel-some-holocaust-survivors-from-ukraine-feel-ambivalent-about-their-war-torn-country-of-birth?mpweb=1161-43550-87485<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn18\">[xviii]<\/a> \u201cZelensky urges Jews to shout as Russia \u2018erases\u2019 Ukraine: \u2018Nazism is born in silence,\u2019\u201d <em>The Times of Israel<\/em>, March 2, 2022. www.timesofisrael.com\/zelensky-urges-jews-to-shout-as-russia-erases-ukraine-nazism-is-born-in-silence\/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&amp;utm_campaign=daily-edition-2022-03-02&amp;utm_medium=email<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn19\">[xix]<\/a> Isabella Kwai, \u201cWalls, Dreams and Genocide: Zelensky\u2019s Speeches Invoke History to Rally Support,\u201d www.nytimes.com\/2022\/03\/21\/world\/europe\/zelensky-speeches-ukraine-russia.html?searchResultPosition=1<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn20\">[xx]<\/a> Tovah Lazaroff. \u201cZelensky: Ukraine will be like Israel, not demilitarized like Switzerland after war,\u201d <em>The Jerusalem Post<\/em>, April 5, 2022. www.jpost.com\/international\/article-703335<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn21\">[xxi]<\/a> Hannah Allam, \u201cIn Ukraine, civilians shape narrative of the war,\u201d <em>The <\/em><em>Washington Post<\/em>, April 8, 2022, www.washingtonpost.com\/national-security\/2022\/04\/08\/ukraine-war-civilians-witness-narrative\/?wpisrc=nl_headlines&amp;carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F368c20d%2F6252aab864253a7f34283891%2F596b0f30ade4e24119acddc4%2F13%2F57%2F6252aab864253a7f34283891<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref\" name=\"_edn22\">[xxii]<\/a> Brent Stephens. \u201cWhy We Admire Zelensky,\u201d <em>The New York Times<\/em>, April 19, 2022, www.nytimes.com\/2022\/04\/19\/opinion\/why-we-admire-zelensky.html<\/p>\n<p><strong>Image Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6976\" style=\"width: 132px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6976\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6976\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.6_Ross_Escorting-122x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"122\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.6_Ross_Escorting-122x150.jpg 122w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.6_Ross_Escorting-244x300.jpg 244w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.6_Ross_Escorting.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 122px) 100vw, 122px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6976\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.6 Henryk Ross.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.6 Henryk Ross. <em>\u0141\u00f3d\u017a<\/em><em> ghetto Jewish police (wearing Star of David<\/em> <em>arm bands) loading fellow residents into a boxcar bound for death camp<\/em>, circa 1942\u20141944. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<br \/>\nDisguised as a custodian, Ross secretly photographed a crowd of \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Jews being herded onto a train of boxcars. Ross recounted: \u201cPeople with whom I was acquainted worked at the railway station of Radogoszcz, which was outside the ghetto but linked to it, and where trains destined for Auschwitz were standing. On one occasion I managed to get into the railway station in the guise of a cleaner. My friends shut me into a cement storeroom. I was there from six in the morning until seven in the evening, until the Germans went away and the transport departed. I watched as the transport left. I heard shouts. I saw the beatings. I saw how they were shooting at them, how they were murdering them, those who refused. Through a hole in a board of the wall of the storeroom I took several pictures.\u201d Ross\u2019s photograph is not sharp, taken from a distance, behind what appears to be a line of concrete slabs. No German soldiers are in view, just the Jewish ghetto police with their Star of David armbands. See: Greg Cook, \u201cHow Henryk Ross Risked His Life To Secretly Photograph Life In A Nazi Ghetto,\u201d WBUR, March 29, 2017. www.wbur.org\/news\/2017\/03\/29\/henryk-ross-nazi-ghetto<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6979\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6979\" class=\"wp-image-6979 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.9_Ross_Dancing-150x104.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"104\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.9_Ross_Dancing-150x104.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.9_Ross_Dancing-300x208.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.9_Ross_Dancing.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6979\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.9 Henryk Ross.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.9 Henryk Ross. <em>Ghetto Elite Dancing<\/em>, 1943. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>Ross\u2019s photographs of the ghetto elite\u2019s attempts to pretend life was normal contrasted with the post-Holocaust visual narrative of acute suffering. However, close examination of this image reveals that even though the two women in foreground were smiling for the camera, their black teeth expose a lack of dental care and proper nutrition. The expression of gentleman in the suit and tie with the mustache appears melancholy at best. Maybe they did not want to admit it at that moment, but they probably knew they were dancing on the deck of <em>The Titanic<\/em>, which sunk in 1912 killing around 1,500 of the 2,224 passengers. That said, even in the waiting room of death people seek moments of release. This is reaffirmed by the remarks of the international relations manager of the Lviv National Opera in Ukraine, made as Russian makes unprovoked war on Ukraine: \u201cIf people day by day are faced with sad news about death, about blood, about bombs, they need to feel other emotions.\u201d See: Ostap Hromysh, the international relations manager of the Lviv National Opera in Ukraine, which recently resumed limited events with ballet and choir performances even as war ravages the country. \u201cThe Quote of the Day,\u201d <em>The New York Times<\/em>, April 12, 2022, p 3. www.nytimes.com\/2022\/04\/11\/todayspaper\/quotation-of-the-day-ballets-bars-and-bomb-scares-lviv-learns-to-live-with-war.html<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6980\" style=\"width: 129px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6980\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6980\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.10-Ross_Folio-page-1-119x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"119\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.10-Ross_Folio-page-1-119x150.jpg 119w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.10-Ross_Folio-page-1-238x300.jpg 238w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.10-Ross_Folio-page-1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 119px) 100vw, 119px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6980\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.10 Henryk Ross.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.10 Henryk Ross. <em>\u0141\u00f3d\u017a<\/em><em> Ghetto Folio<\/em>, page 1, 1940\u20141945; assembled 1962\u20141987. 11 x 8 9\/16 inches. Gelatin silver prints. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>Ross\u2019s editing reveals that life is rarely monolithic; it is a complex bundle of contradictions that illuminate the way singular decisions can compound and change over time.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6981\" style=\"width: 114px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6981\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6981\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.11_Unknown_Ross_Testifies-104x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"104\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.11_Unknown_Ross_Testifies-104x150.jpg 104w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.11_Unknown_Ross_Testifies-208x300.jpg 208w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.11_Unknown_Ross_Testifies.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 104px) 100vw, 104px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6981\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.11 Unknown photographer.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.11 Unknown photographer. <em>Henryk Ross testifying in the trial of Adolf Eichmann at the Jerusalem District Court, <\/em>May 2, 1961. Ghetto Fighters\u2019 House Archives (Itzhak Katzenelson Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum, Documentation and Study Center), Western Galilee, Israel is the world&#8217;s first museum commemorating the Holocaust and Jewish heroism.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>Ross\u2019s photographs were submitted as evidence to help convict Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was a high-ranking Nazi official who played a central role in the implementation of the Final Solution during the Holocaust. Eichmann organized the deportation of more than 1.5 million Jews from all over Europe to ghettos, killing centers, and killing sites in German-occupied Poland and parts of the occupied Soviet Union. For details see: Eichmann Trial, https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/eichmann-trial<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6982\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6982\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6982\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.12_AP_Eisenhower_Death-Camp-150x122.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"122\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.12_AP_Eisenhower_Death-Camp-150x122.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.12_AP_Eisenhower_Death-Camp-300x244.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.12_AP_Eisenhower_Death-Camp.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6982\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.12 AP wirephoto from signal corps radiophoto.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.12 AP wirephoto from signal corps radiophoto. <em>General Dwight D. Eisenhower walks around a cluster of bodies of prisoners who were left lying where slain at Ohrdruf,<\/em> April 12, 1945. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home, Abilene, Kansas.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, (standing center, hands on hips) gazes at the bodies of dead Russian and Polish internees at the former German concentration camp in Ohrdruf Germany while touring the Third Army front with other Allied Generals.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6987\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6987\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6987\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.17_Unknown_Babi-Yar-Ravine--150x120.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"120\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.17_Unknown_Babi-Yar-Ravine--150x120.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.17_Unknown_Babi-Yar-Ravine--300x239.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.17_Unknown_Babi-Yar-Ravine-.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6987\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.17 Unknown Russian photographer.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.17 Unknown Russian photographer. <em>Babi Yar Ravine, northwest of Kiev, Ukraine where the advancing Red Army unearthed the bodies of 14,000 civilians killed by the Nazis<\/em>, 1944.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>On September 29 and 30, 1941, more than 33,000 Jews were executed by Einsatzgruppe C (mobile killing units) and willing Ukrainian executioners in the Babi Yar ravine \u2013 one of the largest mass murders in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n<p>See: St\u00e9phanie Trouillard, \u201cThe first major massacre in the \u2018Holocaust by bullets:\u2019\u201d Babi Yar, 80 years on<em>,\u201d FRANCE 24<\/em>, September 29, 2021. www.france24.com\/en\/europe\/20210929-the-first-major-massacre-in-the-holocaust-by-bullets-babi-yar-80-years-on<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6988\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6988\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6988\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.18_Maloletka_Mass-Grave-150x119.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"119\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.18_Maloletka_Mass-Grave-150x119.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.18_Maloletka_Mass-Grave-300x238.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.18_Maloletka_Mass-Grave.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6988\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.18 \u00a9 Evgeniy Maloletka.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.18 \u00a9 Evgeniy Maloletka. <em>Bodies are placed into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine<\/em>, March 9, 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>Evgeniy Maloletka, \u201cAmid heavy shelling, Ukraine\u2019s Mariupol city uses mass grave,\u201d <em>The Washington Post<\/em>, March 10, 2022. www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/amid-heavy-shelling-ukraines-mariupol-city-uses-mass-grave\/2022\/03\/10\/9ec39dc4-a06b-11ec-9438-255709b6cddc_story.html<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6989\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6989\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6989\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.19_Addario_Perebyinis-family-150x100.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.19_Addario_Perebyinis-family-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.19_Addario_Perebyinis-family-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.19_Addario_Perebyinis-family.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6989\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.19 \u00a9 Lynsey Addario.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.19 \u00a9 Lynsey Addario<em>. Family killed by Russian mortar fire in the Ukraine<\/em>, March 6, 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>Ukrainian soldiers trying to save a man \u2014 the only one of four at that moment who still had a pulse \u2014 moments after being hit by a Russian mortar while trying to flee Irpin, near Kyiv. See: Andrew E. Kramer, \u201cThey Died by a Bridge in Ukraine. This Is Their Story,\u201d <em>The New York Times<\/em>, March 9, 2022. www.nytimes.com\/2022\/03\/09\/world\/europe\/ukraine-family-perebyinis-kyiv.html<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6990\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6990\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6990\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web-150x105.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"105\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web-150x105.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web-768x538.jpg 768w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.20_Nachtwey-Nina-Dead_Web.jpg 833w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6990\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.20 \u00a9 James Nachtwey. Nina, Found Dead, 2022.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.20 \u00a9 James Nachtwey. <em>Nina<\/em>, <em>Found Dead,<\/em> 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>In early April 2022, Nina was found dead in the kitchen of her home in Bucha, outside Kyiv, where she had lived with her sister Lyudmyla. Hundreds of such bodies have been discovered in the district. Nachtwey texted his editor: \u201cThe barbarity and the senselessness of the Russian onslaught are hard to believe even as I witness them with my own eyes. Bombing and shelling civilian residences, firing tank rounds point-blank into homes and hospitals, murdering noncombatants in militarily occupied areas are all tactics being employed by the Russians in a war that was inflicted on a nonthreatening, neighboring sovereign state\u2026. Ordinary\u2019 people are displaying extraordinary courage and determination, if not downright stubbornness, in the face of tremendous destruction and loss of life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>See: James Nachtwey, \u201cThe Costs of War,\u201d <em>The New Yorker<\/em>, May 9, 2022, www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/portfolio\/05\/09\/the-costs-of-war?bxid=5be9e2d224c17c6adf6e147d&amp;cndid=34831695&amp;hasha=47e5dec13b974e588518a71bf31afdc0&amp;hashb=573329092c76f0653725fd88fa9b67a9c0d63f9c&amp;hashc=2224b48914b88a6f2091c8632a432bd13317e086ca181b3d061a915702db8727&amp;esrc=AUTO_OTHER<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6991\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6991\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6991\" src=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.21_Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder_The-Triumph-of-Death-150x107.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"107\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.21_Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder_The-Triumph-of-Death-150x107.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.21_Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder_The-Triumph-of-Death-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6.21_Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder_The-Triumph-of-Death.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6991\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">6.21 Pieter Bruegel the Elder.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>6.21 Pieter Bruegel the Elder. <em>The Triumph of Death<\/em>, 1562\u20141563. 46 x 64 inches, Oil on panel. Museo Nacional Del Prado, Madrid, Spain.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Caption:<\/p>\n<p>This frightening Christian morality painting depicts an army of skeletons, led by Death, destroying the world of the living who are driven toward a huge casket. Every social class is included; offering no hope of salvation. More at: www.museodelprado.es\/en\/the-collection\/art-work\/the-triumph-of-death\/d3d82b0b-9bf2-4082-ab04-66ed53196ccc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Return to theme table of content Return to VJIC table of content Thread # 6 \u00a0Jewish Photographic Perspectives, Part 3 \u00a0Henryk Ross: The \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Ghetto Photographs \u00a9 Robert Hirsch 2022 www.lightresearch.net VASA Journal on Images and Culture (VJIC), Theme Editor &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=6894\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88910,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6894","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2KsSU-1Nc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88910"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6894"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7012,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6894\/revisions\/7012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}