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Gravediggers unload bodies from a cart into a mass grave in the Warsaw ghetto cemetery.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 32218
Gravediggers unload bodies from a cart into a mass grave in the Warsaw ghetto cemetery. Joest's caption reads: "The corpse-carriers took the naked bodies from the cart and threw them into the grave. For this work they wore rubber-gloves, which I first thought were made out of wood."

Gravediggers unload bodies from a cart into a mass grave in the Warsaw ghetto cemetery.

Joest's caption reads: "The corpse-carriers took the naked bodies from the cart and threw them into the grave. For this work they wore rubber-gloves, which I first thought were made out of wood."

Photographer
Heinrich Joest
Date
1941 September 19
Variant Locale
Warszawa
Varshava
Warschau
Photo Designation
GHETTOS (MAJOR) -- WARSAW (Poland) -- Death/Burial -- Cemeteries/Mass Graves/Funerals
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Guenther Schwarberg
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About This Photograph

Biography
Heinrich Joest, German army sergeant during World War II who photographed the Warsaw ghetto. Jost was in his early forties, the owner of a hotel in Langenlonsheim, when he was called to serve in the German army during World War II. On September 19,1941, his birthday, Joest was stationed in Warsaw. On that day he decided to take his Rolleiflex camera into the ghetto because he wanted "to see what went on behind the ghetto walls." Once inside, Joest shot 140 images of every aspect of ghetto life and death. He kept the images to himself until 1982 when he met Guenther Schwarberg, a reporter for "Der Stern" magazine, who interviewed him and facilitated the publication of some of his images in 1988.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Guenther Schwarberg
Source Record ID: Collections: 2004.1.119
Second Record ID: Collections: 2004.1.1
Published Source
Das Getto: Geburtstagsspaziergang in die Hoelle - Schwarberg, Guenther - Steidl Verlag: Goettingen - p. 101
 
Record last modified: 2004-02-13 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa2722