A Birthday Tour of Hell: A Day in the Warsaw Ghetto
GORDON, LEAH SHANKS
A Birthday Tour of Hell A Day in the Warsaw Ghetto LEAH SHANKS GORDON Even today, 50 years later, it is unnerving to think about the Shoah. Yet, there is something compelling in the documentation...
...But I did ask myself, 'What sort of world is this?'" Jost had the film developed in Warsaw, showed the prints to no one and hid them once he returned home...
...The viewer is left with the challenge of judging the photographer's underlying motivation...
...On May 16, 1943, the Germans blew up the Great Synagogue of Warsaw on Tlomackie Street The ghetto was no more...
...a Jewish policeman is directing traffic and not far from him another is dispersing a band of people....When I get closer I hear that a man fainted in the street...
...Whatever his reasons, Jost eventually gave to the annals of 20th century history a unique record of its tragic depths Elie Wiesel, a Shoah survivor, author and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, tells of a recurring nightmare he has: "I wake up shivering, thinking that when we [the survivors] die, no one will be able to persuade people that the Holocaust occurred...
...There are street peddlers and a group of youths sitting on a curb, mothers with prams and teenagers pausing on their bicycles to talk...
...And then there are the dead, unshrouded, piled in carts and suffering the final indignity of being buried naked in mass graves...
...epidemics, particularly typhus, ravaged the community...
...Others feel that he was one more German soldier photographing his subjects as objects...
...By mid-September, only 55,000Jews remained of the nearly half million who once lived in the ghetto...
...Trenton, New Jersey...
...For most of the war he was assigned to Camp 31 near Warsaw and often noticed bodies lying along the ghetto wall, obviously victims caught smuggling or shot for venturing outside the area...
...Mary Berg observed the plight of the children, There are a great number of almost naked children whose parents have died and who sit in rags on the streets Their bodies are horribly emaciated...
...The exhibition is mounted to reflect Jost's roving journey...
...Later that evening, after Jost returned to his barracks, he joined some friends for a birthday supper But he lost his appetite...
...He brooked no squeam-ishness...
...It was his 43rd birthday...
...There was an opportunity to talk to some...
...But they have something more—empathy "Most Holocaust photographic documentation comes from German propaganda records where the Jewish victims are at best objects rather than subjects in the portrayal of their tragedy," says Yitzchak Mais, director of the Yad Vashem Museum, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, and organizer of the exhibit, which appeared at New York's Jewish Museum last fall...
...Among those moved by the exhibition were representatives from the Jewish Museum, who arranged for the photos to be shown in New York...
...They capture all the horror, the sadness, the foreboding, the despair of the ghetto...
...A young girl, propped against a wall, cradles the lifeless body of her dead, or dying—it does not matter at this stage—sibling...
...Within two months, 265,000 Jews were gassed or murdered there...
...It was home to 380,000 Jews, about a third of the city's population...
...It is not the type of thing you put on your coffee table," says Mais...
...Further I come to a stop because I hear a lot of noise and weeping...
...They come to Warsaw empty-handed, broken and crushed, without a penny, without food for a single meal or clothes to cover their nakedness...
...When they burnt down the ghetto, we didn't pay any attention," recalled Heinz Tost...
...A 14-year-old named Kann wrote in June 1942: In the streets we see many typical pictures...
...Why did he go into the hell that was the Warsaw Ghetto in the first place, especially on his birthday...
...Los Angeles...
...They were very strong...
...ChaimA...
...During the three summer months of 1941, 15,655 Jews died of hunger and sickness, including 1,800 children...
...And so it is with the latest material that has come to light, a group of photographs taken by a German soldier named Heinz Jost...
...A few Jews were still well dressed—it was hard to believe that they too were living in the ghetto...
...Chicago...
...Heinz Jost's legacy has taken care of that, 'fi...
...the ghetto was off-limits to German soldiers except for those specifically stationed there...
...The diarists, who chronicled life in the ghetto, captured in words much of what Jost portrayed in his extraordinary photos...
...Into the minute area were squeezed not only Warsaw's Jews but an additional 86,500 Jews who were transferred in from neighboring districts...
...interested, but not really moved by the attack on humanity that he witnessed and in which he was a participant...
...Yet, there is something compelling in the documentation that continues to emerge: a victim's poem, a drawing by a death camp child, an unknown photo...
...I saw people m the street selling potatoes, garlic or celery People dying of hunger didn't ask me for food because I was in German army uniform...
...It was a warped existence...
...He mentioned nothing about what he had witnessed that day, nor did he write about it in letters to his family...
...Heinz Jost's photographs are clearly the exception...
...Perhaps now Jost felt he could show his photos without being stigmatized...
...Scheduled to run for six months, the exhibition stayed for two years...
...The uprising went on for a month until most of the fighters, some 10,000, had been murdered or captured...
...The Nazis believed their own propaganda," explains Mais...
...His decision was taken with full knowledge of the risk...
...Kaplan, Warsaw Diary "The ghetto became a microcosm of absurd reality," says Mais...
...Led by the Jewish Fighting Organization, the population revolted...
...Before World War II, the capital city of Poland was a thriving, vibrant center of Jewish culture and the largest Jewish community in Europe...
...All these scenes are very hard to bear and I go home sad Why do we have to suffer so5 Jost himself, in an interview taken shortly before he died, recalled, There were shops, but you couldn't buy food there, only laundry powder and all sorts of pots and pans...
...a horrible situation between haves and have-nots...
...There is a divergence of opinion regarding his intentions and point of view," write Yitzchak Mais and Julie Reiss, curatorial assistant at the Jewish Museum, in the frontispiece to the exhibition...
...By the time the exhibition closed, Mais had integrated over three-quarters of Jost's photos into Yad Vashem's permanent display...
...Further I see a dead man lying in the street...
...Six months after Mary Berg jotted down these words in her diary, the Nazis began their Final Solution to the Jewish problem...
...Jost did not photograph only the more palatable scenes...
...Whatever his motives, Heinz Jost was like everyone else...
...He was never able to erase the ghetto scenes from his memory...
...There were also mutual aid societies...
...It was not until the 1980s, shortly after his wife's death and before his own, that Jost gave them to the German magazine, Der Stern...
...San Francisco...
...Der Stern also held them for several years until 1987 when, in correspondence with Yad Vashem, editor Guenther Schwarberg mentioned an unusual collection of ghetto photos...
...The day will come when the Jewish people will erect a memorial here...
...People helped each other the best they could...
...She wanted to catch him and get back the bread but the thief had managed to eat it...
...A sense of futility prevailed...
...Jost caught it all...
...They toss around and groan They no longer have a human appearance and are more like monkeys than children...
...Santa Clara, California...
...They no longer beg for bread, but for death...
...He shows Jews with a lack of hostility and with a sense of empathy towards the tragedy unfolding before his eyes...
...Each blown-up photo is accompanied not by a customary label but by excerpts from ghetto diarists who themselves perished...
...Food supplies were restricted below starvation levels...
...Resistance meant execution on the spot...
...one can see their bones through their parchment-like yellow skin...
...That tells the tale of their fate...
...Emmanuel Ringelblum, a ghetto resident, wrote in his journal, In some houses of the very poor, like those on Wolynska Street...it is common for members of whole families to die on one day or in the course of a few days If this situation goes on like this, the "Jewish problem" in Warsaw will soon solve itself...
...I was asked, "How long is this going to go on'" I answered, "Soon the war will be over and everything will be all right and you'll be able to go back to your homes " As the war progressed, the situation in the ghetto grew worse...
...Meanwhile, a resistance group had been formed...
...A year after invading Poland, the Germans set up a district of less than two square miles in the ghetto and closed it off...
...He died of hunger I want to go to my friend but suddenly I see that the Germans are getting hold of Jews to take them as laborers and I run to tell my father On my way I meet lots of poor people begging the Germans for bread...
...In April 1943, the German army entered the ghetto intent on laying waste the area...
...It weaves its way through the ghetto streets, like a voyeur who allows for no modesty...
...Mary Berg, Warsaw Diary viewer spots their sleeve with the ubiquitous yellow star armband that all Jews were compelled to wear...
...Chaim A. Kaplan, Warsaw Diary Yad Vashem first displayed Jost's photos in April 1988 to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the uprising...
...I didn't want to upset them," he said...
...In the Germany to which he returned after the war, the fate of the Jews was a taboo subject...
...University Park, Pennsylvania and Denver, Colorado...
...But Jost entered without difficulty and began snapping street scenes...
...But the enigma of Heinz Jost remains...
...On September 19, 1941, he had the day off...
...The Germans then deliberately created conditions for mass starvation, destitution and death...
...sanitary conditions were intolerable...
...All hospitals and orphanages were liquidated, including the children's home run by the famous educator, Janusz Korczak (see "The Last March of Janusz Korczak's Children," June 1988...
...Millions saw it and were deeply affected...
...Jost's photos are like no others...
...Our eyes popped out when we saw them," says Mais...
...A poor man stole bread from a woman...
...More important, why did he hide the evidence of what he saw for 40 years...
...Over 4,000 catalogues were sold, despite the fact that Holocaust catalogues do not sell well...
...These moving photographs will tour the country in an exhibition titled' "A Day in the Warsaw Ghetto: A Birthday Trip in Hell...
...The reaction was overwhelming...
...He packed up his camera and a dozen rolls of black and white film and headed for the ghetto...
...The Warsaw Ghetto was an incredible place...
...One well-dressed couple, she with a stylish suit and he with a cane, are strolling down a crowded street...
...Poughkepsie, New York...
...For Heinz Jost, a hotelkeeper and amateur photographer from Langelensheim, Germany, the ghetto was a forbidden but curious place...
...very powerful...
...They could be anywhere, unul the "There are a great number of almost naked children whose parents have died and who sit in rags on the streets...
...But by 1980, the Germans were confronting their past, thanks in part to the television miniseries, "Holocaust...
...Some have suggested that his pictures show empathy and concern for his subjects and that perhaps he wanted to record the tragedy of the Warsaw Ghetto for the future...
...From April 1991 to June 1993, the show will travel around the United States under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service to 24 cities and towns, including Boston...
...They were lying outside the houses among the dead, whom no one paid attention to...
...These simple reminders make us stare or read with an inner grief too deep to utter...
...The chronicle is haunting...
...An emaciated, dying child stares hollow-eyed at the photographer while three people hurry by...
...There was nepotism, smuggling, even cabarets tried to stay open...
...The display is presented by themes, starting out gendy with The Streets and ending with Death...
...These nameless numbers translate into, simply, 100 to 150 dead every day...
...They believed the Jews carried diseases...
...Dallas...
...By July of 1942, deportations to the nearby Treblinka concentration camp began...
...All told, he took 129 photos, recording a usual day in one of history's most unusual settings...
Vol. 16 • February 1991 • No. 1
