Art Depicting Jewish Ghettos

‘A Courtyard in the Ghetto’ by Pavel Sonnenschein

Hungry Children in the Warsaw Ghetto – 1941

Two emaciated children in Warsaw Ghetto –One dead or unconscious, the other begging in the street

Cart collecting the dead from the streets. Families would take the dead from their apartments and leave them on the street as a part of the daily routine.

Jews being deported from Pabianice to Lodz ghetto

Judenrat at a sporting event

Warsaw Ghetto photo included in a report to Heinrich Himmler-May 1943.

Jews from the Lodz ghetto are loaded onto freight trains for deportation to the Chelmno killing center. Lodz, Poland, between 1942 and 1944.

Jews carrying bundles of possessions before their deportation from the Kovno ghetto. Kovno, Lithuania, October 1943.

Ghetto wall

A Jew found hiding in the ghetto sewer

A portrait early on in the ghetto.

Gate at Krakow Ghetto--- Translates in Yiddish as “Jewish Residential Center”

Jewish Ghetto in German-Occupied Poland

Jewish policemen and German soldiers regulate movement of Jewish people in the Lodz ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto ---wagon near barbed wire fence

Children’s Art from Terezin

A group led by Emmanuel Ringelblum, a Jewish Polish historian, carried out spiritual and cultural resistance within the Warsaw ghetto by recording details . How is documenting considered resistance? How does it compare to armed resistance?

German soldiers amuse themselves by forcing Jews to dig ditches in an empty lot.

Moses - Poem by Abraham Sutzkever Who is the woman fluttering toward me, At her breast a baby with no name? She hovers through to the Viliya shore And at her breast the child — a flickering flame. She dashes to the shore, into the river, Digs deep into the rushing torrent's hiss. She sets the baby on a floe of ice And she — starts sinking, sinking in abyss. How far is the Viliya from the Nile? Same water flows, days other days beget. The horror of eternity makes it a habit: Return again — so man should not forget. For one last time she reaches out her fingers And pulls the sunset down. The waves, they race Over her head, now stormier and lighter, And on the shore — just I remain, a trace. The ice floe bears a present to the spring: A dreamy baby swimming to the sea. And I accompany it to the moon And bless it: A new Moses will you be! Vilna Ghetto, April 15, 1943  Abraham Sutzkever

My father is a floe on rivers of Siberia, My mother is a bonfire on Viliya's mire, But both are inside me, The floe and the bonfire. My child, they will stay inside me, Behind the eyelids of my eyes — The bonfire and the floe of ice. 

Jews obtaining work permits or ID cards in an administrative office in the ghetto.