George Kadish

George Kadish, born Zvi (Hirsh) Kadushin (1910 September 1997), was a Lithuanian Jewish photographer who documented life in the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust, the period of the Nazi German genocide against Jews. He curated one of the first Holocaust exhibitions by a Jewish survivor for Jewish survivors, entitled Pictures of the Ghetto.

Early life and education Kadish was born in Raseiniai, Lithuania, in 1910, and later moved with his family to Kovno (Kaunas). Before World War II, he taught mathematics, science, and electronics at a Hebrew high school in Kovno. Kadish was an avid amateur photographer and built his own cameras.

Kovno Ghetto photography During the period of Nazi control of Lithuania, he photographed various scenes of life and its difficulties in the ghetto in clandestine circumstances. Kadish constructed cameras by which he could photograph through the buttonhole of his coat or over a window sill. Because of his technical training, Kadish was assigned to the X-ray department of a German military hospital outside the ghetto, where he had access to photographic chemicals and was able to obtain film. To preserve the images, Kadish concealed photographic material in a modified crutch and later hid the negatives underground in milk cans.

With his selfmade camera and a hidden Leica, Kadish was able to photograph scenes that German and local authorities would have treated as dangerous evidence. His photographs include images of children, forced labor, deportations, underground schooling, the ghetto jail, and the destruction of the Kovno ghetto. Among the scenes he documented were prisoners behind a barred window in the ghetto jail, a member of the ghetto underground hiding supplies in a well, children working in ghetto workshops, Jews collecting potatoes, deportation actions, shoes left behind after a deportation, the burning and ruins of the ghetto during its liquidation, and the exhumation of a mass grave at the Ninth Fort after the liberation of Kovno.

Postwar exhibitions and legacy In 1945, Kadish organized , a traveling exhibition based on his photographs from Kovno. It was shown in Landsberg, Feldafing, and Munich, where it reached displaced persons communities. Historian Rachel E. Perry later described it as one of the first exhibitions created by a Jewish survivor for Jewish survivors.