World War 2 | wearethemuseumcollective

Willy Georg was an old German soldier. He made money by taking photos of young German soldiers. In the summer of 1941 he was given permission to enter Warsaw, the Jewish ghetto and take photographs. He shot four roll of film, but his camera got confiscated whilst he was photographing the fifth roll. Thankfully for Georg the officer who confiscated his camera did not search him and he was able to sneak out four rolls of film. He developed the film and stored them along with the prints for the next fifty years until the late 1980s, until he met Rafael Scharf, a researcher of Polish-Jewish Studies. He gave the photographs to Scharf to study. These photographs were subsequently published in 1993 in a book called Warsaw Ghetto: Summer 1941.

I found the photographs so powerful and moving. They are raw. They show ordinary life. The photographs show the horrors but also small moments of joy.

You can find more images here:

http://riowang.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/warsaw-memories.html