George Kadish

Who was George Kadish?

George Kadish, born Zvi Kadushin, was a Lithuanian Jewish photographer who documented life in the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust, the period of the Nazi German genocide against Jews.

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.

His photographs were featured in a 2003 exhibition at the YIVO Institute in New York.