Page 77 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

Mendel Grossman. (Rózia) Grosman, the photographer’s sister, Mendel
courtesy of the State Grosman was assisted by Arie Ben Menachem while
Archive in Łódź
taking those photographs from hiding. In January 1943,
Arie Ben Menachem created a photo-collage album of
6
eighteen pages, using both types of Grosman’s photo-
6 —
Getto. Terra incognita. Sztuka graphs: those made for the Statistics Department and
walcząca Ariego Ben Menachema those made secretly, to give testimony to what the au-
i Mendla Grosmana, ed. X.
Modrzejewska-Mrozowska, thors of the Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto had to pass
A. Różycki, M. Szukalak, over. Ben Menachem’s deeply moving, expressive work,
Łódź 2009. I could see referring to the aesthetics of constructivist collage is
reproductions of that (not existing
anymore) book at the exhibition particularly interesting with regard to the fact that Gros-
Polak-Żyd-Artysta. Tożsamość man’s photographs create a continuum. Edited and in-
a awangarda by Joanna Ritter corporated into a collage, at first they appear to be an
and Jarosław Suchan,
Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, expression of the terror of ‘everyday life in crisis’, of
November 2009-January 2010. managing the unbearable, of surviving and survival –
until the secretly taken pictures reveal the destructive
power and traumatic dimension of the deportations.
Every page of the album has a title. The two last pages
are entitled meaningfully: In spite of all and We will sur-
vive, enabling the contemporary reader to understand
the victims’ viewpoint, time horizon and their experience
of January 1943. From this point of view, the ‘official’
and ‘unofficial’ ghetto photographs used by Ben Men-

Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music 75