Henryk Ross (1910–1991)

Henryk Ross was born Henryk Rosencwaijg to a Jewish family in Poland. Prior to World War II, he worked as a photojournalist and sports photographer for Polish newspapers. He was serving in the Polish Army when Nazi Germany invaded his country in 1939. He was confined to the Łódź Ghetto, and, like Mendel Grossman, worked in the Department of Statistics for the Jewish Council, taking official photos for identity cards. At the risk to his own life, he also took forbidden photos documenting the brutal everyday life in the Ghetto and Nazi atrocities. When the Łódź Ghetto was being liquidated in 1944, Ross buried his photos and negatives in barrels and jars. He and his wife were among the few hundred Jews were kept behind by the Germans as a clean-up crew. They survived until the Red Army liberated the Ghetto in January 1945. About half of Ross's 6,000 buried images also survived. After the war, Ross had his own photography studio in Łódź, before emigrating with his wife Stefania to Israel in 1956. In 1961, he testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ross published a collection of his photos, The Last Journey of the Jews of Lodz, in 1962. His photos have been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and numerous other museums worldwide.