The authors of these photographs are mostly unknown German Wehrmacht and SS soldiers who were stationed in Warsaw. They were able to freely move about the occupied city and take photographs using the most modern 35mm Leica and Contax photographic equipment of the time, brought from their homeland. They had easy access to supplies and photographic laboratories. Above all, though, the prohibition on taking photographs and even owning cameras that occupant authorities decreed for Poles, did not apply to them.

• Fototeka has photographs taken by German soldiers, outside of the official guidelines of the Propagandakompanie (PK). What raised most interest, was destruction from September 1939, parks, the city’s major architectural features, passersby, and the German presence in the capital. Their authors sent such prints to their friends and family, or collected them in albums. They themselves were the heroes of some of the photos, such as those taken with the Saski Palace or the burnt Royal Castle in the background. Of the most piercing are the photos of the Warsaw Ghetto taken by a Luftwaffe soldier. These photographs, mainly taken in central Warsaw, are valuable as an iconographic illustration of the life of the city of Warsaw and its residents in this time.