Julia Pirotte

Who was Julia Pirotte?

Julia Pirotte was a photojournalist known for her work in Marseille during the Second World War when she documented the French Resistance, and for photographs taken in the aftermath of the Kielce Pogrom of 1946.

Pirotte grew up in a working class Jewish family in Warsaw. She emigrated to Belgium in 1934 where she married Jean Pirotte, a labor activist in Brussels, and studied photography. In May 1940, after the German occupation of Belgium and the deportation of her husband, Pirotte made her way to southern France. There she played an active role in Jewish and French resistance groups. Based in Marseille, she worked as a photojournalist for Dimanche Illustré and served as a courier for weapons, false papers and underground publications. During this time she took numerous photographs documenting life under the Vichy Regime. As a member of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, she was able to photograph the activities of the Maquis resistance in the summer of 1944 and the liberation of Marseille.

After the war, Pirotte returned to Poland as a photojournalist for the Polish periodical Zolnierz Polski.