DPs boarding truck

George Kadish, born Zvi (Hirsh) Kadushin (1910- 1997), was a Lithuanian Jewish photographer who documented life in the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust. Prior to World War II he was a mathematics, science and electronics teacher at a Hebrew High School in Kovno, Lithuania. As a hobby, Kadish was a photographer. He was skilled at making home-made cameras. During the period of Nazi control of Lithuania he successfully 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. He was able to photograph sensitive scenes that would attract the ire of Nazis or collaborators, such as scenes of people gathered for forced labor, burning of the ghetto, and deportations. He enlisted the help of Yehuda Zupowitz, a high-ranking officer in the ghetto's Jewish police to help hide his negatives and prints. Kadish retrieved the collection of photographic negatives upon his return to the destroyed ghetto. After Germany's surrender on May 8, 1945, Kadish left Lithuania with his extrordinary documentary trove for Germany. There in the American Zone, he mounted exhibitions of his photographs for survivors residing in displaced persons camps. He also filmed and photographed life in the displaced persons camps in Germany.