Henryk Ross Is Born

In 1910, Henryk Ross was born in Warsaw. Before the German occupation he worked in Łódź as a press and sports photographer. The Art Gallery of Ontario and the Library of Congress give the year 1910 only.

In 1940 he became an official photographer for the Łódź ghetto’s Department of Statistics. He made identity photographs, recorded unidentified dead, and produced required administrative images. He also used his Leica, often hidden under his coat, to photograph hunger, forced labor, and deportations, and, with his wife Stefania as lookout, moments of family life. He later described entering the railway station disguised as a cleaner and photographing a transport through a hole in a storeroom wall.

Before the 1944 liquidation he buried the negatives so that a record of the destruction of Łódź Jewry might survive. He recovered them after liberation. The Art Gallery of Ontario holds the surviving collection.