By Anne Brodie
After generations have spoken out and made films about their experiences as Jews during the Holocaust (holocaust, derived from a Greek word meaning “burnt offering”, we think we know what went down as racially hypnotised, craven German, Ukrainian Slovakian, Romanian, Croatian, Hungarian , Bulgarian and Vichy French, along with Norwegians, Belgians and the Dutch participated in the murder of millions of Jews in Europe. In these and other states, military, law enforcement and private citizens took part in the attempted eradication of a people inspired by Hitler’s Nazi culture. Well, there is always more to know. The piercing HBO Max presents its new doc, from Poland, 33 Photos from the Ghetto. In 1943 Nazis emptied Jews out of Warsaw, proper, and built a walled ghetto to house remaining Jews. They were closely watched and guarded and no photographs were to be taken, as potential future evidence against the Reich. Documentarian Jan Czarlewski reveals what happened inside, thanks to the bravery of Jewish amateur cameramen and fire fighter Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski. He secretly took pictures of the vicious treatments of the residents by Nazi soldiers, the terror, the murders in broad daylight, deaths by starvation, bodies piled in the streets, the torching of the Ghetto with its people inside, hell on earth. If people left it was on trains to the camps, rebellions were stoked but quieted by Nazi gunfire. A cache of 33 photos was recently discovered under a floorboard in a family home and now Grzywaczewski’s efforts have new meaning. His images of what transpired there, are horrifying. His courage in recording what he saw in these monumental photographs, are all proof and evidence for future generations to judge and mourn. One survivor couldn’t look at them; she’d tried all her life to forget those days. The doc is a slap in the face of anyone who thinks we know the Holocaust. There are other stories we don’t and will never know about this most brutal, bestial event in recent human history. 10% of Jews survived, and here are some pictures of those long gone, murdered. Streams January 27.