Another View of the Warsaw Ghetto

The many archival materials documenting life in the Warsaw Ghetto are amongst the most familiar and well known in the field of Holocaust research today.  The documents, photographs, diaries and other historical documentation that survived from this period portray the many different aspects of life in the ghetto.  This overall picture of the ghetto has become deeply embedded in the public consciousness and memory.  In recent years, however, more and more documents and historical sources are being discovered, which cast additional light on everyday life in the ghetto. 

An example of this is a new collection of photographs (catalogue #7566) recently received by the Yad Vashem Archives.  The 16-photograph collection was given to the Archives by Ms. Ellen Presser of the Jugend und Kulturezentrum der Israelitischen Kulturgemeinde, Muenchen.  A Wehrmacht officer, Arnold Becker, took these photographs while on a private visit to the city of Warsaw, which included the ghetto.  Becker, who can be seen in some of the photographs, kept the pictures for many years. Ms. Presser received them via his niece. 

Becker’s visit to the Warsaw Ghetto took place approximately during the winter of 1941/ early 1942.   The photographs add much to the familiar portrayals of street life in the ghetto, of children in rags, rickshaw drivers, the ghetto cemetery, etc.

Becker’s camera also captured the Jewish administrative arrangements in the ghetto, in the form of the Jewish policemen who stood at one of the ghetto gates, between the Aryan street and the designated Jewish area.  At the same time, the personal nature of this collection is very clear.  Wehrmacht officer Becker did not come to the ghetto solely to document life there as a bystander, but rather took photographs as a tourist might, to visually document a personal experience.  Thus, in the same group of photographs we find pictures of the ghetto alongside the officer’s personal photographs of his visit to the city.

The phenomenon of German soldiers and SS men going on tours and taking photographs for their own enjoyment with personal cameras is a familiar one, particularly regarding documentation of the Warsaw Ghetto, and a number of private albums of this nature are preserved in the Yad Vashem Archives. Other such collections apart from Becker’s include those of Heinz Joest (#2536), Willi George (#3186), and J. Heydecker (#3307).

The background information that accompanied this collection of photographs is partial and inaccurate, as a result of which we are missing certain pertinent details.  The Yad Vashem Archives would appreciate any information that could add to our knowledge about these pictures, and about the history of the Warsaw Ghetto in general.  We would also welcome further collections of this nature.