This is a picture of Polish Jews in the streets of Opole ghetto. My father had this photo taken by a local Jewish photographer in July 1941.
My parents, Wilhem and Johanna Schischa [nee Friedmann], were deported to Opole ghetto in Poland from Vienna on 26th February 1941 and died a year later in either Belzec or Sobibor concentration camp.
My father asked the photographer in the ghetto to take pictures and paid him for his services. He sent those pictures alongside with letters to his relatives in Vienna, to demonstrate what life in the ghetto was like that way.
My father also inscribed things on some of the pictures and on this one it says: "They spend their days sitting on stairs From the early morning hours until 6 in the evening they spend their days idly sitting on stairs and stones.?
In his letters he also wrote about the Jews living in the ghetto. He found it terrible that they were dealing with everything, even pork meat, and he didn't understand why they were just sitting around and didn't do anything. He also wrote though, that they weren?t allowed to work in the ghetto.
