life in the warsaw ghetto

Hands up, facing the atrocity of war. Spring 1943, the last inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto are embarked by the Nazis. Behind the image, we find a cliché that has become a symbol of barbarism. Jewish families taken by force, deported to death camps. Even today, these faces remain nameless, no identities are known, and no one has survived. We only recognize a German, the right arm of Commander Jürgen Stroop, head of the SS, who ordered a series of photos to glorify the work of his troops.

“Everything was organized there for survival”

“Stroup wanted to show that he was a good Nazi, that he had done the job well. We are in a terrible scene, (…) we are not going to take people who have a frightened look”, explains Jacques Fredj, director of the Shoah Memorial. This ghetto was the antechamber of death for all the Jews who passed through it. “Everything was organized there for survival. I stayed in the house, sitting or in the basement. There was a toilet bucket in the corner and I had a few slices of bread”, remembers Larissa Cain, survivor of the Warsaw ghetto. One night, she escapes for good, climbs the perimeter wall and leaves the ghetto.