Germans invade Poland 9/1/39 and seize Warsaw by 9/27/39. Jews rounded up. 400,000 people crammed into ghetto followed by mass deportations to death camps or concentration camps. (by train). Paul Goldfinger still images obtained from the Netflix doc. Click once to enlarge.
Captive Jews make boots for German soldiers. Women sewed uniforms. Some were allowed to work in factories on the “aryan side” but eventually all were murdered.
Starvation and disease, especially typhus resulted in high mortality rates in the ghetto. A small number hid outside the ghetto. but were mostly killed or captured during the ghetto uprising. (4/9/43).
Starvation on 140 calories per day.
700 Jewish fighters fought bravely, living like rats in bombed out buildings. The Germans used Ukrainians and Latvian soldiers to stamp out the resistance. This is a famous photo of survivors. The uprising was crushed by 5/16/43. All survivors were murdered.
Many Jews were trapped in burning buildings. There is one photo of an entire family jumping to their deaths out of an apartment building balcony.
Germans liquidated the Ghetto and burned it to the ground.
Why Paul Goldfinger, MD. Blogfinger.net. Posted 3/22/26
During the occupation of Warsaw, no one was allowed to photograph except Germans. But there were some Jews who managed to get some images, but they were few, and some can be seen, for example, in the National Holocaust Museum or at Yad Vashem in Israel.
A courageous 23 year old Christian Polish fireman Leszek Grzywaczewskiego obtained a camera and taught himself how to develop film and make prints. He hid his prints in his family home. He wanted to document what was occurring. He survived.
Many years later a collection of his photos was unearthed by his children who found them in hidden floor spaces. His photos are now considered to be very rare and valuable historic records.
Eventually an HBO documentary of about 33 of his photos was made, and I took these still images from the Netflix film . It is now available for viewing. The 5th image down is a famous photo of remaining survivors. I don’t know the source of that photo.