to “do the best,” in such torment, for the people of the ghetto. [...] If the wall is a symbol of the first paradigm, the uniform of the Jewish police could serve the same function with regard to the second paradigm. Polish Jews who have accepted this dirty job as a guarantee of certain privileges: very temporary privileges, in fact, since, like the others, they too will end up losing everything and being murdered.”
The Germans demanded the supply of sheepskins for the army fighting in the east. Adam Czerniaków, the president of Judenrat, tried to exchange the collected fur and sheepskins for people imprisoned for illegally leaving the ghetto. Finally, on March 11, 1942, he succeeded in freeing the first group of prisoners. The President personally went to the Central Jail on Gęsiej Street. On March 11, 1942, he noted the following in his diary: “At 3.30 I released 151 prisoners from the Jewish prison. Among them, 5 died, and 7 were hospitalised. I placed thirty or so prisoners in a shelter; the others went home. I spoke to the prisoners. A great emotion overwhelmed everyone. A crowd of people awaited the prisoners on the street”. [photo 5] Consequently, the photographer introduced an important figure to the ghetto, whom the creator of the Archive, Emanuel Ringelblum, was extremely critical of - Adam Czerniaków, President of Judenrat. In the photographs, he presented him ambiguously - maybe because he allowed him to take photographs freely in the ghetto so he could carry out the assignments of the Judenrat, or perhaps because he knew too much about him. Following the inclusion of Chłodna Street into the ghetto in December 1941, Adam Czerniaków moved into the tenement house at number 20. The Foto-Forbert photo studio also moved into the same tenement house.
The last fragment of the collection shown at the exhibition is: “The third paradigm that structures the Oneg Shabbat photograph collection will therefore logically be that of the ungovernable people: a people of nameless, shipwrecked beings. A people that no government will want to take care of. To which, therefore, any government – even Jewish – will remain hostile. And so there opens up the vague area of “life in spite of all,” of ungoverned life, that is to say, life abandoned unto itself, illicit or clandestine, out of vital necessity. We can find its visual symbol, in contrast to the variety of uniforms, in the rags or tatters that street children wore at the time.” czy podziemnego, wynikającego z życiowej konieczności.
"The President, Czerniakow, with a girl rescued from the execution of eight Jews who willfully left the ghetto"
photo by Henryk (Jechiel) Bojm (?), Foto-Forbert