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New images discovered in Poland offer a never-before-seen perspective on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
(JTA) — For the last 80 years, the only way to see images of Jews rising up against their captors in the Warsaw Ghetto has been from the perspective of Germans, who took the only known photographs of the seminal event of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.
But last month, a roll of film taken by a Warsaw firefighter during the uprising was discovered by his son. The developed pictures offer a previously unseen perspective on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising according to the POLIN Museum, which announced the find this week.
“The image on them is often blurred, recorded in a hurry, hidden, partially obscured by the elements of the immediate surroundings: the window frame, the wall of the building or standing figures of people,” the museum said in a statement. “The photos, however imperfect, are priceless.”
The pictures were taken by Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski, a Warsaw firefighter whose brigade was tasked with making sure the fire in the ghetto did not spread to the “Aryan” side of the city as the Nazis put down the Jewish revolt.
Negatives from photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are handled at the POLIN Museum in Warsaw. (Maciek Jaźwiecki / POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews)
An estimated 13,000 Jews died during the uprising, which was carefully organized and took place over several weeks in April and May 1943, following the Nazis’ decision to “liquidate” the ghetto, Europe’s largest. Many of them died as a result of the fires.
“The sight of those people taken out of there will probably remain in my eyes for the rest of my life,” Grzywaczewski wrote in his diary in 1943. “Faces (…) with mad, unconscious eyes. (…) silhouettes staggering from hunger and terror, dirty, torn. Shot in masses, some alive fall over the corpses of others already liquidated.”
The POLIN museum, which opened on the 70th anniversary of the ghetto uprising 10 years ago to tell the history of Polish Jews, said the photographs suggest that Grzywaczewski understood the significance of what he was doing. The roll contained 48 shots, 36 of which had never been seen before this month.
“These are the views of smoke over the ghetto, on its streets and backyards, burned-out houses, firefighters putting out the fire, standing on the roof of the house and eating a meal from metal canteens in the street,” the museum said. “It seems that Leszek Grzywaczewski tried to record these scenes as best he could, realizing the importance of documenting the events inaccessible to the eyes of people on the other side of the ghetto wall.”
The differences in lighting between shots, as well as the inclusion of photographs of the Aryan side of the city interspersed among those of the ghetto, suggest that Grzywaczewski entered the ghetto multiple times with a camera, not just on one occasion.
The pictures were found by Grzywaczewski’s son, Maciej Grzywaczewski, who spent months looking through his father’s archive’s collection on the museum’s hunch that there may be something of value there.
The museum plans to display the pictures as part of an exhibition scheduled around the 80th anniversary of the uprising in April.
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Frontrunner for Iran’s Next Supreme Leader Emerges, US Sub Sinks Iranian Warship Off Sri Lanka
Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, visits Hezbollah’s office in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 1, 2024. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
The powerful son of Iran’s slain supreme leader emerged on Wednesday as a frontrunner to succeed him as the US stepped up its military campaign against Tehran.
As new explosions rang out in Tehran, plans were in doubt for a funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, killed by Israeli forces on Saturday in the first assassination of a nation’s top ruler by an airstrike.
The body had been expected to lie in state in a vast Tehran mosque from Wednesday evening, but state media reported a farewell ceremony had been postponed.
Two Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s slain supreme leader, was not in Tehran when his father was killed in a strike that destroyed the leader‘s compound.
Iran said the Assembly of Experts that will select the new leader would announce its decision soon, only the second time it will have done so since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979.
Assembly member Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told state TV the candidates had already been identified but did not name them.
Israel said it would hunt down whoever was chosen.
Other candidates for supreme leader include Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republic’s founder and a champion of the reformist faction sidelined in recent decades.
But the favorite appears to be Mojtaba Khamenei, who has amassed power as a senior figure in the security forces and the vast business empire they control, the Iranian sources said. Choosing him would send a signal that hardliners were still firmly in charge.
Some Iranians have openly celebrated the death of the supreme leader, whose security forces killed thousands of anti-government demonstrators only weeks ago in the biggest domestic unrest since the era of the revolution.
But Iranians angry with the government said there was unlikely to be much sign of protest while bombs are falling.
“We have nowhere to go to protect ourselves from strikes, how can we protest?” Farah, 45, said by phone from Tehran, adding that the security forces “are everywhere. They will kill us. I hate this regime, but first I have to think about the safety of my two children.”
Meanwhile, in a sign of the US military’s reach, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a US submarine had sunk an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. At least 80 people were killed, Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister told local television.
The United States and Israel pressed on with their round-the-clock assaults on Iran that began on Saturday. The top US commander said the campaign was “ahead of the game plan” and Hegseth said the US was winning the conflict.
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down,” Hegseth told a briefing. “Our air defenses and that of our allies have plenty of runway. We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.”
A New York Times report said that Iranian intelligence had reached out to the CIA early in the war about a path toward ending the conflict.
The report said that officials in Washington were skeptical of an “off-ramp” for now, while Trump said on Tuesday that Iranians wanted talks but it was “too late.”
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Britain Launches Review Into School-Related Antisemitism
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump (not pictured) hold a bilateral meeting at Trump Turnberry golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Britain‘s government on Wednesday launched an independent review into antisemitism in England’s schools and colleges, responding to data showing classroom-related incidents have doubled since before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
Attacks on Jews have risen globally since Hamas’s assault on Israel, which triggered the Gaza war. Britain reported a 4% annual increase in cases of antisemitism in 2025 – the second-highest total on record – including a sharp spike after a deadly synagogue attack in northern England in October.
The Community Security Trust, which advises Jewish communities on security, recorded 204 school–related antisemitic incidents in 2025, twice pre-2023 levels.
“The figures are stark and clear,” education minister Bridget Phillipson said in a statement.
She added that “too many Jewish teachers who raised concerns felt that nothing was done. That is not acceptable.”
The government said the aim of the review was to assess how well education settings identify, prevent and respond to antisemitic behavior, and where further support was needed.
The review will examine schools’ policies, how incidents are handled when they occur, what preventive measures are in place, and how external factors – including protests outside schools and wider geopolitical tensions – influence behavior within education settings.
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Israel Orders Lebanese to Leave Swathe of the South ‘Immediately’ as Hezbollah Strikes Ramp Up
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, Lebanon, March 4, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Israel warned residents to immediately leave a swathe of south Lebanon on Wednesday, ordering them to move north of the Litani River on the third day of full-blown hostilities with the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
Lebanon has emerged as a theater in the war that has engulfed the region since the United States and Israel attacked Iran. Hezbollah launched drones and rockets at Israel on Monday, prompting Israeli retaliation.
Nearly 60,000 people have fled the fighting, the United Nations said, adding to tens of thousands who were already displaced by a 2024 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
An Israeli military spokesperson published a map on Wednesday of the area in southern Lebanon that he said residents should evacuate, an area amounting to around 8% of Lebanese territory.
A day after Israel‘s defense minister said he had authorized the military to advance and take control of additional positions, Israeli troops had moved into at least nine towns in southern Lebanon, a senior Lebanese security official told Reuters.
The Israeli military said two soldiers were wounded as a result of anti-tank fire, the first reported injuries among Israeli troops since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday.
ISRAELI TROOPS ‘A LITTLE FARTHER’ INSIDE LEBANON
The Lebanese army said it had redeployed troops from some border positions in light of Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon.
It said it had arrested 26 Lebanese nationals in various places who were carrying weapons without a license but did not say whether they were members of Hezbollah. The Lebanese cabinet on Monday voted to outlaw Hezbollah’s military activities.
The Israeli military declined to comment on any specific new deployments in Lebanon.
A spokesperson said the military was “positioning troops a little farther” into Lebanon than before, “to prevent any attacks against the northern communities” in Israel.
Israel has kept troops at several locations inside Lebanese territory since its 2024 war against Hezbollah.
While Israel has already warned residents to leave dozens of villages in the south, Wednesday’s order was the broadest yet, covering an area between the border and the Litani River, which meets the Mediterranean some 10 km (6 miles) north of Tyre, a historic port city and one of Lebanon’s biggest.
The Israeli warning told residents to immediately move north of the river “to guarantee your safety.”
Many thousands of Lebanese have already fled their homes in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, and the south, parts of the country that bore the brunt of the 2024 war.
50 KILLED IN LEBANON, SAYS HEALTH MINISTRY
An Israeli airstrike hit a four-story building in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbeck, killing six people and wounding 15, the Lebanese National News Agency reported. It said rescue workers were still searching for missing people.
A strike also hit a hotel in the Beirut suburb of Hazmieh, well outside the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs.
Hezbollah announced a number of attacks on Wednesday, including one using what it described as a precision-guided missile that it said was fired at a military facility in northern Israel, and another with attack drones fired at a base 120 km (75 miles) inside Israel.
On Tuesday, missiles fired from Lebanon set off air raid sirens as deep into the country as its main commercial hub Tel Aviv. An Israeli military source said they were fired by Hezbollah. There was no immediate claim by the group.
The Lebanese health ministry has said 50 people have been killed in Lebanon since Monday and 246 wounded.
There have been no reported fatalities in Israel as a result of attacks by Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim group established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982.
During the 2024 fighting, tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns in the border area but many have now returned. Israeli officials have said there are no plans to remove them for now.
Hezbollah said it opened fire on Monday to avenge the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday in the US-Israeli attack.
Israeli military spokesperson Effie Defrin said the Israeli military had attacked more than 250 Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon over a 48-hour period.
Israel has invaded Lebanon several times since 1978, and occupied a belt of territory in the south until 2000, when it withdrew following years of guerrilla warfare by Hezbollah.