Ernő Vadas, (Hungarian, 1899 – 1962) – When I saw the photo today on social media, it hit me hard. I think it is a terrific photograph. Technically, there is light leading to dark. There is the slant of the path that adds dynamism. There is a long line of people on a path to emphasise the long road they must take. And the lead-in from human size people in the foreground to a vague background overshadowed by the buildings and the chimney.
Of course, they could all be happy, chatting away or enjoying recent memories that cocoon them in joy. We don’t know.
If you google Vadas’s name and the photos he made, you will see that before the war they were lyrical, poetic.
But after the war, after it was different. The photo above dates from 1955.
His work did not appear in Új Idők again until 1946. In fact, during that period, Vadas, who was Jewish, was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, and later to its satellite camp at Gunskirchen. He survived the concentration camps and returned to Hungary in the summer of 1945.
His friend and colleague Tibor Csörge wrote that while others tried to warn Vadas to flee the country and escape the Nazis, he chose to stay, knowing that he would likely be sent to the concentration camps. “He declared that the dangers threatening him ‘had no basis in law’ and ‘the measures were immoral,’ so for him to seek to wriggle out of any consequences would be tantamount to acknowledging the Arrow-Cross perverters of the law,” ( FROM FLICKR: Vadas)
[Arrow-Cross was the Hungarian Fascist organisation and I mentioned them in this post about Dohany synagogue in Budapest]
Pre-war photos
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