A firefighter photographed Warsaw ghetto in flames. Unique images found after 80 years

The roll of film with photos of the Warsaw Ghetto taken by Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski has been found after nearly 80 years. At the request of the curators of the exhibition "Around Us a Sea of Fire. The Fate of Jewish Civilians During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising", the author's son - Maciej Grzywaczewski - searched the entirety of his father's photographic archives and found the original negatives.

"We more or less knew from the start what kind of photos to look for. Maciej Grzywaczewski knew his father had taken these photos during the uprising, but he did not know he possessed the original material, that is the negatives. This is a new find," said Olga Kaliszewska of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews press office. The author's son found the roll of film in the very last box he looked into, which was in the attic of his sister's apartment.

The box contained a set of photos taken during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski, a firefighter at the Warsaw Fire Brigade during the Second World War. The Germans sent the firefighters into the burning ghetto—their job was to ensure the fire did not spread to the houses on the “Aryan” side. It was then that 23-year-old firefighter took the photos.

"The images in the photos are often blurred, recorded in a rush, from a hidden location, partially obscured by elements of the immediate surroundings—a window frame, a wall of a building or figures of people standing in the foreground. The photos, albeit so imperfect, are priceless. These are the only photos that we know of taken inside the ghetto during the Uprising whose authors are not the German perpetrators," the museum said.

POLIN museum informes that "a total of forty-eight shots were recorded on the film, thirty-three of which depict the ghetto". "Aside from the twelve photos that have been published before, held in the form of prints at the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Jewish Historical Institute, there are images that have never been shown before. These are photos depicting the smoke over the ghetto as well as in the streets and courtyards inside the ghetto, burnt-out houses, firefighters putting out the flames, posing on the roof of a building or eating from mess tins in the street," we read.

"Many images are repeated, especially those of the burning buildings, the ghetto wall and people being led to Umschlagplatz. It seems that Leszek Grzywaczewski tried his best to record these scenes, realising the importance of documenting events inaccessible to the eyes of people on the other side of the ghetto wall," POLIN explains.

Furthermore - the museum says - "the photographic film presents a hitherto unknown sequence of individual frames". "It testifies to the fact that the author entered the ghetto with his camera more than once. The intensity of light in the photos proves that they were taken at different times of day and in different weather conditions. The frames from the ghetto are interspersed with images of a walk in the park."

The images will be displayed at a temporary exhibition titled "Around Us a Sea of Fire. The Fate of Jewish Civilians During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" which will open in April. POLIN museum said it would "show the negatives as the original material from which the prints and their copies were subsequently made". "Some prints travelled the world, published in books or displayed in exhibitions. Finding their negatives is akin to reaching the source—the first original recording which contains all the frames and points to the sequence in which they were taken," the museum added.

"We can see images from the Uprising we have never seen before, or spot new details and fragments of the frames that were cut from the prints. The story of their author and the context in which they were taken are just as important. The knowledge of the context in which this material came into being enables us to fully understand it and to perceive it as a testament that goes beyond registering images of the Uprising," we read at POLIN website.

From 1941 Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski worked with Warsaw Fire Brigade. Photography was his passion and he would take pictures during the whole occupation period, including the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Most likely, he spend nearly four weeks in the ghetto: from 21 April until 15 May, 1943. A Home Army soldier, Grzywaczewski also took part in the Warsaw Uprising, during which he was wounded in a leg.

After the war had ended, Zbigniew Leszek worked at the Fire Station in Katowice. Next, he graduated from the Ship Building Faculty at the Polytechnic in Gdańsk. He worked for the Polish Registry of Shipping and at the Maritime Institute.