r/history Jan 25 '23 Platinum 1

A firefighter's 1943 photos of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising have been found Article

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/21/1150586336/warsaw-ghetto-uprising-1943-photos-found
5.0k Upvotes

964

u/Geek-Haven888 Jan 25 '23

The museum's historians said that the value of Grzywaczewski's pictures lies in their being the only known images from the ghetto uprising that were not taken by the German forces, and which therefore were not shot with the intention of serving Nazi propaganda.

96

u/Kris_n Jan 25 '23

Thats indeed valuable! They show how the firemen and other first responders would see the uprising. We can’t know his stance towards jews and the ghetto, but as you state - they weren’t taken for propaganda reasons.

Amazing

61

u/LordGwyn-n-Tonic Jan 25 '23

I may have misread the article but I think it said he and his family were risking their lives to hide Jews. So we can guess what his sympathies may have been.

22

u/Kris_n Jan 25 '23

Well, i have to admit that I wrote this slightly before reading the whole article. So yes, we know his stance, or his family’s stance.

615

u/Mjbishop327 Jan 25 '23

TIL the uprising fighters held out for nearly a month

212

u/DuckTapeHandgrenade Jan 25 '23

The Warsaw Uprising Museum was one of the best, and darkest, museums ive ever been to.

64

u/OJezu Jan 25 '23

That's a different uprising. There were two, the Ghetto Uprising in 1943, and Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

317

u/butteryflame Jan 25 '23

They held out longer than some German invaded countries. Really impressive

18

u/throwaway97909790 Jan 25 '23

Mila 18 by Herman Wouk is great historical fiction about the uprising.

10

u/ThisMustBeFakeMine Jan 25 '23

I went to look it up, as it sounds like something I'd like to read. Could it be by Leon Uris? I didn't see a Herman Wouk version...

7

u/ActEnvironmental3538 Jan 25 '23

It is Leon Uris, I have it on the shelf and it is as good as mentioned.

3

u/Cerebral-Parsley Jan 25 '23

I just read From the Ashes of Sobibor by Thomas Blatt about the Sobibor death camp revolt. A good read as well.

2

u/ThisMustBeFakeMine Jan 25 '23

Excellent! Thank you, I'm going to get it today...

5

u/Cerebral-Parsley Jan 25 '23

I just read From the Ashes of Sobibor by Thomas Blatt about the Sobibor death camp revolt. A good read as well.

3

u/ThisMustBeFakeMine Jan 25 '23

I'm a total history junkie, and I'm fascinated by any and everything about WWII.
Thank you so much for the recommendation!

3

u/Cerebral-Parsley Jan 25 '23

Yeah Sobibor and the other extermination camps (Belzec and Treblinka) aren't really talked about in main stream Holocaust history. It's where they just straight up unloaded them off the trains and straight into the gas chambers. Then the camps were torn up and hidden before the war ended. They were fairly unknown for many years. At the end the prisoner laborers revolted at Sobibor and Treblinka and some escaped. The wikis on them are a fascinating read.

3

u/Cerebral-Parsley Jan 25 '23

If you love WW2 you have to read Catch 22 as well it's my all time favorite book.

3

u/throwaway97909790 Jan 26 '23

It is Leon Uris. My bad. I tend to get them mixed up. I listened to it on audible and it was great.

2

u/ThisMustBeFakeMine Jan 26 '23

I ordered the paperback yesterday! Thanks for the recommendation!

30

u/HoneyInBlackCoffee Jan 25 '23

In 1943 Germany had other issues. Easier to wait them out anyway.

82

u/KamtzaBarKamtza Jan 25 '23

Throughout the entire war they had "other issues" yet still saw fit to divert resources to annihilate Jews. Because one of the central aims of the German war was the extermination of the Jews

7

u/HoneyInBlackCoffee Jan 25 '23

Res to invade the soviet Union are different to Res used to quell uprisings. The guys in Warsaw would have been there anyway

5

u/throwaway97909790 Jan 25 '23

300 German soldiers were killed. Not exactly 'waiting them out.'

13

u/raktoe Jan 25 '23

That’s the number of resistance fighters that were killed. The German casualty number is 110, with 17 killed, 93 wounded officially, although there is a decent chance it is higher.

I don’t know how to check, but if the majority of their casualties came in the initial ambush, it’s still plausible they waited them out after that.

2

u/CopprRegendt Jan 25 '23

No, at the end of the war Germany started to "liquidize" their Jewish prisoners. Meaning kill everyone. At some camps and ghettos, they were killing 10-15,000 people a day.

They weren't even using gas anymore, they'd march them to massive graves in the woods and just shoot them with a single bullet. If they weren't dead, they'd still fall into the pit and die by suffocation as the next rounds of prisoners fell on top of them.

The parts I put behind a spoiler are nsfl

0

u/HoneyInBlackCoffee Jan 26 '23

1943 isn't the end of the war...

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

35

u/justyourbarber Jan 25 '23

Hey France held out for a month and a half, thank you very much

11

u/YakuzaMachine Jan 25 '23

History shows they did the right thing. Saved a ton of lives and put up strategic resistance that was essential. I also don't care for France but not because of ww2.

21

u/Breadloafs Jan 25 '23

did the right thing

some French people did the right thing. France turned over more Jews per capita than Germany ever did. The overwhelming majority of the French police, military, and government took to the Vichy regime without much complaint.

7

u/frenchchevalierblanc Jan 25 '23

75% of jews on french territory survived

8

u/scolfin Jan 25 '23

Which conveniently takes credit for Algerian resistance.

3

u/frenchchevalierblanc Jan 25 '23

I'm not sure what you mean.

75% of jews in French territory (metropolitan france occupied by Germany), excluding the one in north african territory or colonies

4

u/Zingzing_Jr Jan 25 '23

But Algeria was considered to be part of the Metropolitan at the time.

-2

u/frenchchevalierblanc Jan 25 '23

yes northern part of Algeria but not with this statistics, Algeria was never occupied by Germans

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33

u/lenin1991 Jan 25 '23

History shows they did the right thing.

Active mass collaboration with genocide is not the right thing.

-10

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '23

[deleted]

36

u/Picticious Jan 25 '23

Well, they may not have wanted to, but they sure participated.

Around 80% of the Jews arrested and sent to their deaths in France weren’t arrested by Germans, they were arrested by the French.

But ask any French person and they were all la resistance.

Pfft.

-5

u/frenchchevalierblanc Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

75% of jews in France survived though, including 70,000 hidden children.

It's true that France before 1943 was still struggling to act as if the French Police (essentially in the northern part of France officially "occupied" area where Vichy didn't have much control) was still in control, so they were responsible to arrest jews (they literally asked for it to the germans). There was no really way to know what would become of them though, jews didn't really know either. Quota asked by the germans were never fulfilled though. Lots of french policemen could help some families still pretending to arrest, some policemen just did as asked. Even in places like the Vel d'Hiv were jews where regrouped some people just "walk away" while policemen were looking the other way.

Things like "also arresting the children" was seen as they would go to work camps with families, people thought that if you keep families together with children it would mean they wouldn't kill everyone, why bother? That's all those subtle decisions and the dilution of responsibilities that makes things like shoah possible in the end.

Some people though understood exactly what the horror mean and did everything they can to hide / go out of camps.

1 million french soldiers were emprisonned in Germany and the germans used them as bargaining chips.

13

u/Picticious Jan 25 '23

That’s 72,000 Jews still murdered.

72,000 people, were rounded up and slaughtered like pigs.

-8

u/frenchchevalierblanc Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

yes no one is denying that but the dilution of responsibilies make things happen it's not that french policemen went and killed everyone, they were sent to camps in Germany as far as they knew (after 1943 Germans were in charge for everything )

9

u/scolfin Jan 25 '23

75% escaped, and it's interesting that you present the non-Jewish Frenchmen as more French and important.

5

u/grixit Jan 25 '23

According to one source i read, Vichy actually saved a lot of jews by losing them in the bureaucracy. "Honest, Herr Kommisar, we put them on a train to Berlin, i just can't seem to find the paperwork at the moment".

26

u/ATNinja Jan 25 '23

Without any data on either side; that sounds like revisionist history to make France seem less complicit.

If there's a prevailing sentiment for many years and then you start seeing "maybe surrendering so quickly was smart" "maybe the Vichy were undermining the nazis from within" just seems like changing the narrative. Like what we started seeing with the confederates 60 years after the Civil War.

Even if some Vichy officials helped some jews escape, i bet they still harmed many more jews than they helped.

-5

u/frenchchevalierblanc Jan 25 '23

70,000 children from jewish families were hidden by french people, you can imagine how many people needs to be kept in secret and not tell anything to the authorities.

There were 350,000 jewish people on French territory in 1940, 100,000 of them were "foreign" jews that were not born French. France deported 75,000 of them (2,000 survived), mostly "foreign jews".

10

u/Picticious Jan 25 '23

Sweden, Denmark and Albania managed to save their Jews.

Your numbers sound good like this but they don’t account for the 72,000 rounded up and slaughtered.

Shall we talk about the political prisoners now? Resistance fighters that were murdered?

I wouldn’t care as much if France didn’t try and whitewash what they were involved with.

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2

u/LogicalConstant Jan 26 '23

It seems like you're lumping all the French people together as a big collective. Some individuals were good and hid jews while some helped murder them. Politicians, police, and citizens each played different parts. Hard to discuss it intelligently without specifying who you're talking about.

2

u/scolfin Jan 25 '23

Intentionally? I've similarly heard that Austrian incompetence saved a lot of Jews.

1

u/frenchchevalierblanc Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

It was not Vichy as a whole but more people working in the administration etc..

Pétain didn't care about jews, he just not want to be seen deporting french people. So foreign jews were given without a blink from Pétain.

1

u/IdesOfMarchCometh Jan 25 '23

Poles didn't surrender. It was a lost cause and many died but the next invader will know it won't be easy.

-1

u/Picticious Jan 25 '23

Numerous witness accounts of the poles hunting down Jews for the Germans though, even polish people who hid Jews never revealed it because they didn’t want the wrath from their own countrymen.

No one could go against the Germans!

Albania and Denmark and Sweden showed it could be done.

Interestingly Albania was the only European country to have more jews at the end of the war than when it began, how amazing is that!

1

u/Pepsi-Min Jan 25 '23

I also don't care for France but not because of ww2.

British people be like

1

u/Morbusgametheory Jan 25 '23

And many French Generals thought Germany couldn't get past the Minot Line and didn't anticipate Big Bertha.

1

u/xcomcmdr Jan 25 '23

Actually that's not true at all. The Maginot line was designed to slow down the Germans long enough for mass conscription to take place.

It was a very formidable defense line, and the reason why the Germans opted for the Ardennes route instead. It did serve its purpose, and brave souls sacrified themselves in there. Their sacrifice was not in vain. What they did was not stupid.

They had a job to do. They held the line.

Germany had an overwhelming population advantage compared to France, and the French Republic reacted accordingly.

The Maginot line never was about stopping anything. The generals were not idiots.

0

u/Morbusgametheory Jan 26 '23

You're right they didn't build fortifications in the North because they didn't think the Reich couldn't get through as quick as they did, they also weren't expecting a big rail gun to be made and used against them.

Also the Minot Line wasn't staffed appropriately at the time, and I never called them idiots, over confident is the preferred inference.

123

u/g_core18 Jan 25 '23

Shows both the tenacity of the Polish defenders and how nightmarish urban combat is

54

u/SherbertEquivalent66 Jan 25 '23

I think it was mostly Jews who fought in the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

91

u/Adonisbb Jan 25 '23

Polish-Jewish defenders, then. Their nationality was Polish.

48

u/Seienchin88 Jan 25 '23

No, not all. Many jews from other occupied territories and even Germany had been transferred to the Ghetto already after prior purges made room.

Its all freaking depressing but its nice to know at least some got away thanks to Polish help.

27

u/raltoid Jan 25 '23

Over a quarter of them were Polish, but something like 90% of those were not from Warzaw.

5

u/singularineet Jan 25 '23

The Poles did not, at the time, consider the Jews to be True Poles. Look at what happened to Jews who tried to return to their homes in Poland after the war to see an example. Plus, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were not all from Poland.

6

u/SherbertEquivalent66 Jan 26 '23

Also, Jews who tried to join Polish partisans to fight against the Nazis were mostly refused.

-19

u/SherbertEquivalent66 Jan 25 '23

Ok. I was just pointing out that both the Poles and the Nazis emphasized that distinction.

5

u/bobrobor Jan 25 '23

Most Poles did no such thing.

11

u/zdrozda Jan 25 '23

Yeah, we did. Just like with all the other nationalities. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, the second republic was incredibly diverse.

1

u/bobrobor Jan 25 '23

Do you not see the word “most” in my reply?

13

u/ATNinja Jan 25 '23

Do you think Poland in the 40s was not extremely anti-semitic?

12

u/FlipaFlapa Jan 25 '23

Poland is historically one of the least anti-semitic nations in Europe. They’ve had a sizable integrated population of Polish-Jewish people for many hundreds of years straight

-5

u/ATNinja Jan 25 '23

Poland was extremely anti semitic in the 40s and refused to allow their deported jews back to their homes from Siberia and the camps after ww2.

According to wikipedia, there were 3000 jews in Poland in 2010, hardly a sizeable population.

22

u/QikPlays Jan 25 '23

Yes, because a lot of them died during the holocaust…

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7

u/HiddenLordGhost Jan 25 '23

Okay, so lol - no. It was not.

We had this little thing that can amount to pretty much occupation by USSR called PRL, that next to no one will defend on the ground we "decided for ourselves".

Before war it had one of the biggest amount of Jewish citizenry in the world, and a lot of our bigger cities had pretty sizeable influence left behind by some. Łódź is one for example, lol.

1

u/bobrobor Jan 25 '23

After WW2 those decisions were made by the Soviet Union not the Polish “government.”

0

u/bobrobor Jan 25 '23

I KNOW it was not. I had family there that often discussed the subject. Sure there were racists like in any other country, but significantly smaller percentage that anywhere else in Europe. There is a reason why Polish names figure prominently here .

-24

u/djc1000 Jan 25 '23

Their nationality was Jewish. Their first language would have been Yiddish. Their citizenship was polish.

19

u/WhiskerTwitch Jan 25 '23

Their nationality was Jewish.

Not true. Their ethnicity and religion were Jewish. Their nationality/citizenship were Polish. No one's nationality was 'Jewish' then.

-17

u/djc1000 Jan 25 '23

You think you know what a nationality is, but you don’t.

19

u/lostindanet Jan 25 '23

hell, they created submachinegun factories in cellars in that time.

60

u/bobrobor Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

Not the same uprising. Blyskawica was created for the city-wide one. Both were ridiculously under-supplied in arms, but the ghetto one had almost no arms at all. Relatively speaking. If they actually had arms they would have had a chance.

13

u/ElCapitanMarklar Jan 25 '23

That is a very well written article. It deserves a post in itself

5

u/lostindanet Jan 25 '23

ah, thank you for the correction

6

u/bobrobor Jan 25 '23

Addition to your apt observation, not correction :) Thank you for bringing up this often-forgotten topic.

2

u/lostindanet Jan 25 '23

speaking of which, serependity is a thing, fresh as fresh goes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNoyjHwVCmQ

1

u/bobrobor Jan 25 '23

Thank you for that. Amazing! And a perfect complement to Ian’s Błyskawica one

205

u/auxerrois Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

Less than 100 years ago. Within living memory.

92

u/giantbeardedface Jan 25 '23

Fewer and fewer living survivors every day. We need to make sure we educate the future generations.

-3

u/Ohgodgethelp Jan 25 '23

The spirit of resistence, though, is dead

137

u/Crusty_Shart Jan 25 '23

So there is no way to see the other 17 photos unless we go to the museum exhibit?

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u/Prahaaa Jan 25 '23

Exactly. We've found 20 photos never before seen! Oh, and here's 3 of them!

46

u/camwow13 Jan 25 '23

Museums and archives can be hilariously stingy about releasing high res scans of what they've found. Though it's possible these are just buried in some very technical obscure web portal for the museums work that I haven't found yet.

To be fair, scanning things in is expensive, boring, and extremely time consuming. The margins for historical archive work is almost always in the negative.

28

u/CactusBoyScout Jan 25 '23

I love museums but they sometimes thrive on artificial scarcity. I often end up buying the book about an exhibit because that’s the only way I’ll be able to see the objects after it ends.

I think in a lot of cases they don’t have the rights to publish them online. But it’s still frustrating.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '23

In alot of cases the content is publicly owned and can't be copyrighted. Butthey will illegally claim copyright anyway.

4

u/eaglessoar Jan 25 '23

I love museums but they sometimes thrive on artificial scarcity.

they have so much in storage its crazy

-4

u/hawksdiesel Jan 25 '23

Or they want you to ask and they will be happy to show you, in person.

11

u/camwow13 Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

True, but the photos are almost certainly out of copyright and it should be easy enough to access high res scans for remote projects if they exist.

Data ultimately doesn't exist if it's inaccessible.

I get raising the bar for accessing stuff, but it kills the casual research curiosity for a lot of people. When I scanned 17k pages of yearbooks and docs for a school with my book scanner, I could have charged for access like all those yearbook sites. Instead I just posted it all online for free in high res. I'm never going to recoup the time costs involved in digitizing it. Might as well make sure as many people can get to it as possible. To date nobody has ever done anything particularly research worthy with that content, but I've had dozens of curious old people contact me to say thanks for letting them explore their old long lost yearbooks from their home.

16

u/ZooplanktonblameOver Jan 25 '23

I work in digitization at a major institution, specifically on film scanning (among other things). The position of literally everyone who works in this area (including curators especially) is that we should make everything freely available online. Like you say, data doesn't exist unless it's accessible. We feel great pride in making things freely available to the world.

The reason why in every case where we can't make something public is the copyright holder. Polish copyright law on photographs is similar to the US and elsewhere - retroactively applied to 70 years after the photographer's death (the copyright law previously would have put these in the public domain already, but the new law retroactively put these back in copyright).

The institution may own the negatives, but not the copyright - this is standard. So any use requires permission from the copyright holder. Many copyright holders (which often is the estate of the photographer who is no longer alive) are happy to have the images be digitized and available for the public to see, but others emphatically are not for a variety of reasons.

I have no particular knowledge of the situation here. It could very well be that it's the museum itself being stingy and wanting people to come see them in person. But it's not like institutions digitize things for you to see online because they don't want you to come in person. The number of people who are going to go to this museum specifically to see these images is extremely small - mainly niche researchers and historians. So I'm just speculating that it's likely or at least very possible the copyright holder (the son of the photographer it sounds like) is enforcing restrictions on it, because that is extremely common.

2

u/LogicalConstant Jan 26 '23

Copyright laws need a massive overhaul. Patents are arguably more important to society and they only last 20 years. 70 years after the death of the author is ridiculous. If you can't make a profit off of your photographs after 20 years, you have a problem that can't be addressed through copyright law. The whole purpose of protecting copyright holders and patent holders is to benefit SOCIETY by encouraging the production of new ideas and works. It doesn't benefit society when a man in 2023 can stop the world from publishing photographs taken in 1943 by his father who died in 1993. That only benefits the photographer's son, not society.

3

u/camwow13 Jan 25 '23

That's super cool! I've digitized film as a hobby and for friends/family/small businesses, but not on that scale. I'm sure you love seeing all that old stuff come back to life in modern accessible formats too!

I (wrongly) assumed Poland wouldn't have as hardcore copyright laws as the US does, but yup, that's the case. That definitely makes sense though. You have to stay above board on who holds the rights even if it seems a little ridiculous at times.

It is extremely niche to researchers and historians. I know no museum is holding out with the hope that someone is going to come specifically for some random scanned images. People, even experts in the field, really don't care enough most of the time. Most archivists definitely would prefer to just throw it out (in an organized fashion of course haha) and let bygones be bygones.

Still, I've seen some places stay pretty overzealous on gatekeeping their archives. Random story, I worked for a university and their library had an enormously convoluted process to access their old, university specific, and mostly public domain photo archive. The people managing it are all in their 60s and 70s and would not budge that the super niche 120 year old photos MUST be protected. I worked in marketing and figured out which librarian to contact to have the lists of photo ID's sent over to me in high res when we needed some archival content. The rest of my coworkers just went to the index site, downloaded the low res preview with the watermark, and edited or cropped the watermark out. I couldn't convince them to just take the time to email the right person and get it in full quality, haha.

1

u/LogicalConstant Jan 26 '23

[Serious question, I know nothing about how museums operate]: Is it really that time-consuming to scan them? I understand that there can be restoration work necessary, but is it ALWAYS necessary? Why is it not possible (or wise) to quickly digitize them and release them in a crude form?

3

u/camwow13 Jan 26 '23

There's a few answers to this because it can depend on a lot of things.

Basically there's a lot of ways to scan film. Some are very slow, some are very fast. Automated systems can be incredibly expensive. The best dedicated film scanners are no longer made and can be very expensive to obtain and maintain. The dedicated systems with automated scanning can be extremely expensive. Automated mechanisms also specialize on strip film or mounted slides.

Currently made systems mostly rely on camera scanning, which is pretty good these days. There's one that does slide carousels and I think they made a system for strip film. There's also an automated strip film system by Negative Supply.

If you don't have an automated system you have to manually mount each strip of film, scan all 3-5 frames, take it off, put it away, grab another, keep going. Or do that for each individual slide. Flatbed scanners are among the most common ways to scan film (though it's not nearly as good as camera scanning), and you can do a bunch of frames at once. But they're usually very slow and takes a few minutes per slide.

There's just a lot of ways to do it but it almost always involves a lot of manual intervention even with the fastest systems.

Besides the actual scanning you have to deal with the media you're digitizing too. Re-sleeve, remount, and re-sort anything that might be deteriorating and in poor condition. Clean major dust off the frames, decide if something isn't even worth scanning, wear gloves and handle the film carefully so you don't damage it, keep everything in the organization system so it isn't lost, organize it physically and digitally, tag the photos according to date and content (data doesn't exist if it isn't organized and/or searchable), decide how much editing you'll do to each frame, and adapt your procedures because of special circumstances.

You can scan everything and just toss it up there. People do that all the time, but it's still a very physical and manual process. And if you're after quality and organization, it can take even longer.

You get to see so many cool memories from the past vividly restored in very high resolution. Properly exposed, developed, high quality, and safely stored film can deliver some amazing digital results. Far better than a lot of people realize (though film doesn't have infinite bazillion K resolution like some redditors may say haha). It's very rewarding! But it's also very slow and very repetitive.

Bit of a random explanation but hope that makes sense!

13

u/Spanish-Sith Jan 25 '23

Is that really that crazy?

51

u/NotSoIntelligentAnt Jan 25 '23

With the advent of the Internet yes. History should not be reserved for the wealthy that can pay for the trip

3

u/JJMcGee83 Jan 25 '23

To add to this what if something happens to the museum and their only copy the the photos? They go back to being lost forever.

-22

u/Spanish-Sith Jan 25 '23

So museums should just give everything away for free? Who pays curators, restorators etc.? Ads from the internet?

30

u/Incorrect_Oymoron Jan 25 '23

So museums should just give everything away for free

He's not asking for the negatives. He just wants to see a picture of it.

30

u/Mattidh1 Jan 25 '23

The public, most museums are publicly supported. History and knowledge (to an extent) should not be reserved for the wealthy and privileged.

0

u/LogicalConstant Jan 26 '23

Bingo. If public money is spent on something, the public has an interest in it.

-2

u/Bob_Majerle Jan 25 '23

Sounds like something the people who run the museum should figure out. Making an effort to keep up with the times is any business’s responsibility

6

u/nightraindream Jan 25 '23

Hard disagree, it shouldn't be a business at all, museums should be public services and funded as such. It is in humanity's interest to make sure we don't forget the past.

0

u/dangercat415 Jan 25 '23

Museums shouldn't take donations then and pretend to be charities if they are about profit maximization.

1

u/lumoruk Jan 25 '23

I think most Museums in the UK are free to visit, well the good ones.

38

u/ballerina_wannabe Jan 25 '23

Super interesting! Thanks for sharing!

86

u/WhiskerTwitch Jan 25 '23

"Some 750 young Jewish fighters armed with just pistols and other light
arms attacked a German force more than three times larger. In their last
testaments they said they knew they were doomed but wanted to die at a
time and place of their own choosing."
Incredible bravery and strength.
If anyone's unfamiliar with what happened, I'd encourage you to watch The Pianist. While it's not a documentary, it covers the early days before the war, through the war itself from the perspective of a young musician. It should really be required watching in schools these days.

5

u/75footubi Jan 25 '23

There's also a fairly decent limited series made in 2001, Uprising that does a pretty decent fictionalized retelling.

-6

u/Ajira2 Jan 25 '23

Seems odd to want to require historical fiction watching. Holocaust deniers would have a field day.

8

u/HephaestusHarper Jan 25 '23

Do you feel that way about school teaching Maus or Number the Stars since they're historical fiction depictions of the Holocaust?

1

u/argross91 Jan 25 '23

Maus is not fiction. Art Spiegelman told his parents’ story. Yes he used the allegory of cats and mice, but it doesn’t make it less true

1

u/HephaestusHarper Jan 25 '23

So how is that different from a historical fiction book on the exact same subject? Obviously Maus is an allegory, but they're both telling the same story of people experiencing the same event, with aspects fictionalized or changed for the purpose of storytelling.

As long as historical fiction is well-researched and respectful and accurate to the events and real-life figures depicted, and as long as it's correctly labeled and not presented as nonfiction, I can't see it as sensationalizing anything.

A final question - what about narrative nonfiction, something like The Killer Angels, where the events of the battle are meticulously detailed and all characters are actual historical figures but the dialogue is fictionalized because obviously we don't know everything that was actually said?

0

u/argross91 Jan 25 '23

I’m not against historical fiction when it is properly researched. But it is very problematic when it is not well researched because it often feeds into deniers’ narratives. But Maus is telling his parents’ actual story. Not a story he made up

1

u/HephaestusHarper Jan 25 '23

Okay, I give up. Dismissing an entire literary genre because some people are bad at it and some books are problematic or wrong is - let's call it a bold choice.

0

u/argross91 Jan 25 '23

I’m not dismissing a whole genre. I read plenty of historical fiction that is researched. I am just saying that there is a difference between fiction and nonfiction, even if it is historical fiction

-11

u/Ajira2 Jan 25 '23

Yes. Is there really a need to sensationalize the event?

5

u/HephaestusHarper Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

How - huh? How does historical fiction sensationalize an event? Well-written, well-researched HF can provide insight into the lives and experiences of those who didn't have a chance to tell their story. It shouldn't be used at the expense of factual and first-hand accounts, but it's a useful tool.

Edited to add: I also think historical fiction is extremely useful in elementary classroom settings. Depending on the era you're teaching, narrative nonfiction accounts might be scarce or nonexistent at that reading and maturity level. Telling the story of the event through the eyes of a character their age allows them to relate to the story and understand it. It's what made me fall in love with history as a child. Books like The Witch of Blackbird Pond and Steal Away Home and Fortune's Journey and all the diaries in the Dear America Series, the American Girl books, even my problematic-but-beloved Little House series - these are what introduced me to the specific realm of history I find most fascinating as an adult: the often mundane, day-to-day lives of ordinary girls and women who cooked and cleaned and taught school and got married and had relatable feelings and thoughts.

13

u/CrookedCreek13 Jan 25 '23

I think they’re aiming that recommendation more to people that are open to the idea that the Holocaust happened

19

u/Bob_Majerle Jan 25 '23

Aka 99% of people on Earth

-8

u/Ajira2 Jan 25 '23

Just seems like asking for “they’re making us watch this fake movie because there aren’t any real ones”. Then that’ll lead people to finding Anne Frank’s sister on Good Morning Britain saying that the Soviet photos are fake. Then who knows?

9

u/hairsprayking Jan 25 '23

Fascists will always make bad-faith arguments no matter how perfect the evidence is against them. Better to heed them no mind and just teach good critical thinking skills.

3

u/DarthPutler Jan 25 '23

She never said they were fake

3

u/DarthPutler Jan 25 '23

The pianist isnt fiction…

1

u/Mitzvahgolem_613 Jan 25 '23

Sonder Aktion 1005 from Germany own records shuts them up..

8

u/hairsprayking Jan 25 '23

I'd love if any historians could answer this: How accurate was the portrayal of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the Leon Uris novel Mila 18? I remember reading it in highschool and absolutely loving it.

9

u/GobiasCafe Jan 25 '23

The pianist did a decent job portraying this in the movie.

2

u/The_next_Holmes Jan 25 '23

Thanks for sharing

2

u/CopprRegendt Jan 25 '23

I fell down a wikihole on this uprising a few years ago. It's a fascinating and tragic story of hope and community. It was so close to working, but in the end, you can see how Nazi lies and manipulation, as well as polish antisemitism, prevented the uprising's success.

There's also a decently accurate movie with Schwimmer and Hank Azaria. Aside from combining a few real people into one character and merging a few events into one for the sake of storytelling, it's a good depiction of the events.

But do read the wiki and a few Jewish historical society entries first (just Google "Warsaw uprising" and pick a few Jewish community/history sites; the wiki is very good but it's important to get the history from the the horse's mouth too).

3

u/Mitzvahgolem_613 Jan 25 '23

My grandparents escaped from Lithuania Nazi occupation..

-1

u/Aldirick1022 Jan 25 '23

Believing that the Allies would come, that they would have supplies and assistance. It never came.

The Russians waited until they had beaten each other to death and then entered. Took their heroes and executed them for being an example.

31

u/bernan39 Jan 25 '23

You are talking about Warsaw Uprising from Operation Tempest - not Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Soviets behaved like this while 'liberating' the whole of Poland. In the east they allowed Polish fighters to fight alongside them only to arrest them after Germans were pushed out.

1

u/pursued_by_bear Jan 25 '23

While studying WWII in high school, there was a made-for-tv movie about the uprising which was the first time I had heard anything about it. I'm not sure who is all in it, but I know Hank Azaria is, and I know that it was really informative. I definitely recommend looking for it if anyone is interested.

-4

u/Spineynorman67 Jan 25 '23

Meanwhile, Stalin ordered his forces to wait just outside Warsaw, with the deliberate intention of having any Polish nationalists liquidated, so they could just take over. Which they did.

16

u/Zingzing_Jr Jan 25 '23

Wrong Warsaw Uprising. There were two of them.

1

u/Spineynorman67 Jan 25 '23

Thank you! The other was '44.

5

u/Mitzvahgolem_613 Jan 25 '23

Poland fought both evil Nazi Germany and Soviet union..The only country to do so..

-76

u/Amazing-Key-1575 Jan 25 '23

I am not asking this to discredit the images or challenge their veracity but looking at them after spending a few weeks playing around with AI image generators…how do we know nowadays if something is a real “historic” image?

80

u/Ts4EVER Jan 25 '23

At present such historical photos would be impossible to fake since the AI can't get uniform or weapon details right that an expert would know about.

18

u/Amazing-Key-1575 Jan 25 '23

Thank you for actually answering my question instead of downvoting me because you are reading between the lines. This is what I wanted to know.

Do you think AI will be able to do this soon though? Or a combo of AI & photoshop could trick most people right? How could one be sure? Is there any forensic photographic test that can be done?

137

u/Geek-Haven888 Jan 25 '23 Gold

They are physical negatives from the 1940s

-33

u/Amazing-Key-1575 Jan 25 '23

Ya, I don’t mean the real physical negatives. I mean digital representations of them.

I haven’t done it yet, but now I will - copy a description of one of the images and put it in an ai image gen + “photographic negative 1940’s archival scan hyper-realistic aged military dust” or something along those lines. If the image doesn’t have people in it I bet one can make a pretty convincing digital image of a physical negative.

this is obviously going to be an issue in the future, so I dunno why people are so upset I’m asking

86

u/SyphiliticPlatypus Jan 25 '23

Good overall intellectual question but curious why, out of any myriad number of reddit posts with pictures and videos, that this specific set of photos are the ones that made you raise the question of veracity?

-36

u/Amazing-Key-1575 Jan 25 '23

Because the first photo I saw in the article without people looked similar to pictures I’ve autogenerated. I’ve mostly been generating prompts like “archival scanned military photograph 1942 Bavaria leaked photograph photorealistic [etc…convoluted phrases]” and it often generates black & white photographs that I imagine if done with more iterations and intentional keywords look like this. This also was what showed up on my feed. I literally say I am not challenging the photos in this post, I am curious. It could have been a picture of anything & I would’ve commented the same. Holy hell people read into things looking at the downvotes. Isn’t this a legitimate question we should be asking nowadays? You’ve seen all the UAP news. With as many fakes coming out about contemporary things now I wonder about how we will trust historical images.

93

u/phd2k1 Jan 25 '23

There are a lot of Holocaust deniers in the world. It may not have been your intention, but you effectively came into a thread about the Holocaust, saying “how do we know these pictures are real?”. You shouldn’t be surprised that people were put off by your question.

1

u/red_purple_red Jan 25 '23

Will the photos be made publicly available on the Internet?

1

u/AdLainUnknown Jan 25 '23

Any movies or doc's about this?

1

u/joeitaliano24 Jan 25 '23

Was the ghetto uprising intentionally taking place on Hitler’s birthday, or was that just a coincidence?

1

u/TheNext8thEmperor Jan 25 '23

Thank you for the post it helps put an end to the holicost deniers I Can't believe that some would even go there.