Mr. Cezary, a history lover from Warsaw, recently bought at an online auction old photographs showing residents of the Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto in central Poland—the first ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. Now, he is asking for help in identifying the depicted people.
As the seller told him, the five photos were found in an old book in his possession. All of them were probably taken in the summer of 1942. The dedication on the back of one of them reads, “To dear Rachelka during the cruel war days in Piotrków. Olga.”
“I would like to believe that among the people seen in the photos, many were saved. I would very much like to find the family of those people in the photographs. I can imagine that for the families, these could be the only photos—images of their relatives,” he told the website.
The photographs purchased by Mr. Cezary probably show the newlyweds and the wedding feast among their loved ones. They were taken during the uneasy times of World War II.
The ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, central Poland, was established on October 8, 1939, shortly after the outbreak of WWII. It was the first ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. It housed the city’s Jewish residents, and it is estimated that there were more than 9,000 of them there at the beginning of the war.
