There’s so much more i’d like to write regarding the PHotoEspaña festival which runs in Madrid until July 28. Time has come to cover other exhibitions and artistic events i’ve visited more recently. However, i can’t turn the page without mentioning this little fellow playing as ghetto policeman. Almost every mainstream Spanish newspaper selected this image among those offered by the press kit to illustrate their coverage of the festival.

The portrait was made by Henryk Ross, a Polish Jewish photographer who was employed by the Department of Statistics for the Jewish Council within the Lodz ghetto during the Holocaust. Ross documented everyday life in the ghetto while staying officially in the good graces of the German occupier. Before the closure of the ghetto in 1944, Ross buried his negatives in the hope to leave a record of the martyrdom.