Description: Taken by a German soldier and never before published, these photographs record a stage in the destruction of a great Jewish community - one that had been at the forefront of European culture and achievement. While the photographs examine a single day in the life of the ghetto, the accompanying passages give voice to the years 1939-1943 through Warsaw Ghetto diaries, extracts from the Polish Underground Press, and Himmler's final liquidation decree. Rafael F. Scharf, who compiled the text, writes: "The people caught in these photographs, busy, feverish, emaciated, oppressed, but still living a life of sorts, are unaware of the unthinkably cruel end that awaits them shortly. Virtually none will escape a horrible death. One's instinct is to shout a word of warning - run! hide! - but it is too late". Photographer Willy Georg was thirty years old and serving the German army as a radio operator. On the day his commanding officer issued him a pass and ordered him behind the ghetto walls, he brought with him his lunch and his Leica. He walked through those cruel streets, snapped four rolls of film, and had loaded the fifth before the police stopped him. They confiscated the film in his camera, but the four rolls he saved remained in his possession, the photographs unseen until recovered by Scharf fifty years later.

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