Young women daintily made up and wearing their Shabbat best, grinning men stand by a shelter in the morning sunshine — faces and figures so vividly captured that they could have been photographed yesterday.
A set of heartbreaking colour portraits of Jews in the Polish ghettos of Kutno and Warsaw, taken between 1938 and 1940, were published for the first time by US magazine Life last week to coincide with the 72nd anniversary of the opening of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Shockingly, the photographs of apparently willing subjects were taken by high-ranking Nazi photographer Hugo Jaeger, whose colour and 3D-capable camera was supplied by the German hierarchy.
The photos show the residents of the ghettos apparently at ease with their photographer, smiling at the camera, with almost no military presence visible.
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