Joe Heydecker was born in Nuremberg, Germany, into a liberal-minded family.
He studied with a Jewish photographer
and in 1933, published his first novel,
which was prohibited by the Nazis. He left Germany, travelled in Europe, and stayed
some time in Warsaw. In 1938, he was in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss. Enlisted by the Wehrmacht in August 1939, Joe Heydecker was stationed in Warsaw early in 1941. He took two series of photos in the Ghetto. Back in Warsaw late in 1944, he broke the regulations to visit the ruins of the Ghetto. In 1945, he was a reporter at the Nuremberg Trial. He developed the photos he had taken in the Ghetto forty years later - a tardy but important eyewitness account. We know of at least two other soldiers who took pictures in the Ghetto: Heinz Jost, on 19 September 1941, and Willy Georg, in the summer of 1941.
