Henryk Ross

• Name — Henryk Ross • Born — 1 May 1910 • Died — 1991 • Known for — Staff photographer for Judenrat, Łódź Ghetto • Spouse — Stefania Schoenberg (m. 1941)

Ross was born in 1910. Ross was a sports photographer for a Warsaw newspaper, prior to World War II. From 1940, Ross worked with his colleague Mendel Grossman producing identity and propaganda photographs for the Department of Statistics of the Judenrat in the Łódź Ghetto. While, maintaining their official position as staff photographers, Ross and Grossman also made unauthorized photographs of Nazi atrocities, including public hangings. Part of his official duties was taking identity photographs. He constructed a three level stage in his studio that let him photograph up to twelve people with a single negative. While the authorities supplied him with only enough film for assigned work, this trick allowed him extra film he could use for unauthorized photography. His unofficial images covered scenes from daily life, communal celebrations, children digging for scraps of food and large groups of Jews being led to deportation and being loaded into box cars. In 1944, the Nazis started the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto and the deportation of the remaining Jews from it to Chelmno and Auschwitz. In the fall of 1944, Ross buried his photos and negatives in a box, hoping they might survive as a historical record. About 800 Jews, including Ross, were left in the ghetto for cleanup work; according to Yad Vashem, eight mass graves had already been prepared for them. Ross survived until the Red Army entered Łódź in January 1945. After liberation, he retrieved the buried box of photographs. Although much of the material had been damaged or destroyed by water, about half of his 6,000 images survived. Ross in 1950 emigrated to Israel and testified during the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann. He died in 1991.

• The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross

Henryk Ross is recorded with the occupation photographer. Recorded as a citizen of Israel.