More than any other photographer, Roman Vishniac`s images have

Transcription

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered
February 11–May 29, 2016
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More than any other photographer, Roman Vishniac’s images have profoundly influenced
contemporary notions of Jewish life in eastern Europe. Vishniac created the most widely
recognized and reproduced photographic record of that world on the eve of its annihilation,
yet only a small fraction of his work was published or printed during his lifetime. Known
primarily for this poignant record, Vishniac was in fact a remarkably versatile and innovative
photographer. His body of work spans more than five decades, ranging from early
engagements with European modernism in the 1920s to highly inventive color
photomicroscopy in the 1950s and 60s. Roman Vishniac Rediscovered introduces a radically
diverse body of work—much of it only recently discovered—and repositions Vishniac’s
iconic photographs of eastern European Jewry within a broader tradition of 1930s social
documentary photography.
Born in 1897 to an affluent Russian Jewish family, Vishniac was raised in Moscow, where he
studied zoology and biology. He immigrated to Berlin in 1920 in the aftermath of the
Bolshevik Revolution. As an amateur photographer he took to the streets, offering witty and
wry visual commentary on his adopted city while experimenting with new approaches to
framing and composition. As Vishniac documented the Nazi rise to power, foreboding signs
of oppression soon became a focal point of his work. In 1935, he was commissioned by the
European headquarters of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)—the world’s
largest Jewish relief organization—to photograph impoverished Jewish communities in
eastern Europe. Vishniac’s four years of work on the project yielded the celebrated images
that have largely defined his photographic legacy.
Arriving in New York on New Year’s Eve 1940, Vishniac opened a portrait studio, working
to make ends meet by documenting American Jewish communal and immigrant life, while
establishing himself as a pioneer in the field of photomicroscopy. In 1947, he returned to
Europe and documented Jewish Displaced Persons camps, the efforts of Holocaust
survivors to rebuild their lives, emigration and relief efforts, and the ruins of Berlin.
Roman Vishniac Rediscovered is a comprehensive reappraisal of Vishniac’s total photographic
output, from his early years in Berlin through the postwar period in America. The exhibition
is drawn from the Roman Vishniac archive at ICP and serves as an introduction to this vast
assemblage comprising more than 30,000 objects, including recently discovered vintage
prints, rare moving film footage, contact sheets, personal correspondence, and exhibition
prints made from his recently digitized negatives.
Maya Benton, Curator
1897
Roman Vishniac (Wischniak) is born to a prosperous Russian Jewish family in Pavlovsk,
near Saint Petersburg, and is raised in Moscow.
1904
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On his seventh birthday, Vishniac receives his first camera and microscope.
1904–14
Vishniac studies biology and zoology, and experiments with camera lenses and
magnification, documenting his results on film.
1917
The Bolsheviks seize power in the Russian Revolution.
1917–20
Vishniac’s family emigrates from Russia to Germany. Vishniac remains in Moscow to pursue
graduate studies in biology and zoology at Shanyavsky Institute and becomes an avid
amateur photographer.
1920
Vishniac and Luta Bagg, a Latvian Jew, are married at a border town on the way from
Moscow to Riga. They immigrate to Weimar Berlin.
1920s
Vishniac is an active member of several Berlin camera clubs. He builds a fully equipped
photo-processing lab in his Berlin apartment in the Wilmersdorf district, a neighborhood
heavily populated by affluent Russian Jews. He continues to pursue scientific research and
microscopy while becoming an accomplished street photographer.
1922
Vishniac’s son Wolf is born.
1926
Vishniac’s daughter Mara is born.
Late 1920s
Vishniac meets Edith Ernst, whom he later marries.
1933
Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany. The Dachau Concentration Camp is opened.
1934–38
Vishniac takes photographs of German Jewish relief and community organizations operating
under the Nazi regime in Berlin.
1935
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The Nuremberg Laws are instituted in Germany and widespread anti-Semitic restrictions are imposed upon
German Jews. Jewish businesses are boycotted in Germany, inspiring similar anti-Semitic actions throughout
Poland.
1935–38
Vishniac is commissioned by the European headquarters of the Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee (JDC) in Paris, the world’s largest Jewish relief organization, to photograph
impoverished Jewish communities throughout eastern Europe.
1935–44
American photographers Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, and others are hired by Roy Stryker,
director of the Farm Security Administration’s Information Division, to document the plight of poor
sharecroppers in the Depression-era South.
1938
Germany annexes Austria.
Vishniac is commissioned by the JDC to photograph thousands of Jewish refugees expelled
from Germany in the Polish border town of Zbaszyn.
In November, coordinated attacks on Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues throughout Germany take
place (Kristallnacht). Following this incident, approximately 30,000 Jews are arrested and sent to
concentration camps.
Vishniac’s photographs of Jewish communities in eastern Europe are exhibited in the JDC
offices in New York. This is the first time that his work is displayed in the US.
Vishniac shoots moving film footage depicting Jewish life in Carpathian Ruthenia for the
JDC. Some material is sent to the JDC in New York; other footage, identified by Vishniac as
“outtakes,” resurfaces in Paris after the war.
ca. 1938
The JDC commissions Vishniac to photograph the Werkdorp Wieringen, an agrarian
training camp in the Netherlands where young German Jewish refugees learn agricultural
and vocational skills in preparation for immigration to Palestine and other countries.
1939
Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop mutual nonaggression pact. Germany invades
Poland on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declare war against Germany and World War
II begins. The fist Nazi ghetto is established in Poland.
Vishniac works as a freelance photographer in western Europe, traveling briefly to London
and settling in France, while Luta remains in Berlin and struggles to secure immigration visas
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and affidavits for her family. Mara Vishniac is sent to safety in Sweden, where she is later
joined by her brother Wolf.
Vishniac travels to the South of France where he makes a promotional film for the JDC
documenting an ORT (Jewish Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor) vocational training
school in Marseille. This is his last JDC assignment until he returns to Europe in 1947.
Vishniac is arrested and imprisoned for a month in the Camp du Ruchard internment camp
in France.
1940
The Vichy regime is established in France.
In Paris, Vishniac entrusts his negatives to friend Walter Bierer, who promises to transport
them to the US.
Vishniac reunites with Luta, Wolf, and Mara in Lisbon. They embark for New York on the
S.S. Siboney. The Vishniac family arrives in New York on New Year’s Eve.
1941
Germany invades the Soviet Union. Japan attacks the United States naval fleet at Pearl Harbor. Germany
declares war on the US. Germany begins mass deportations of Jews to Poland.
Vishniac opens a portrait studio in his family’s Upper West Side apartment and works to
establish himself as a science photographer. Over the next decade, he undertakes several
commissions for Jewish relief, social service, and community organizations in the US.
Vishniac’s parents begin living in hiding in the South of France.
1942
The Wannsee Conference is held to implement and coordinate the Final Solution, a plan to annihilate the
Jewish people. Germany implements a policy of total destruction of European Jewry.
Walter Bierer brings Vishniac’s negatives from France via Cuba to the US, where they are
confiscated by Customs. After a lengthy struggle, the negatives are released to Vishniac, and
he immediately begins to exhibit and publish them.
1943
An exhibition of Vishniac’s photographs, Children of Want and Fear: Europe Before the War, is
held at the Teachers College Library, Columbia University.
1944
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A major exhibition of Vishniac’s photographs, Pictures of Jewish Life in Prewar Poland, is held at
the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York.
1945
Germany surrenders on May 7, 1945. The Auschwitz concentration camp is liberated by Soviet troops.
Japan surrenders in September and World War II ends.
YIVO mounts a second large-scale Vishniac exhibition, Jewish Life in the Carpathians.
1946
Vishniac becomes an American citizen. Vishniac and Luta divorce.
1947
Vishniac returns to Europe on assignment for the JDC, the United Jewish Appeal (UJA),
and The Forward to document Jewish Displaced Persons camps. While there, he photographs
his demolished former hometown, Berlin.
Vishniac reconnects with Edith Ernst, whom he marries in Berlin. They return to New York
together, settling on the Upper West Side.
Vishniac’s first monograph, Polish Jews: A Pictorial Record, is published in New York.
1948
The State of Israel is established.
1955
Vishniac is included in Edward Steichen’s seminal exhibition and catalog, The Family of Man,
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
1966
Vishniac begins an enduring friendship with Cornell Capa, who later establishes the
International Center of Photography (ICP).
1971
Vishniac’s book of color photomicroscopy, Building Blocks of Life: Proteins, Vitamins and
Hormones, is published.
Cornell Capa’s International Fund for Concerned Photography presents the exhibition The
Concerns of Roman Vishniac: Man, Nature, and Science at the Jewish Museum in New York.
1974
The slim monograph, Roman Vishniac, is published by ICP.
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1983
A large selection of Vishniac’s photographs documenting Jewish life in eastern Europe is
published to international acclaim in A Vanished World, which wins the National Jewish
Book Award. An exhibition of the same name, organized by ICP, tours the US and
internationally through 1988.
1990
Vishniac dies at the age of ninety-two.
1991
Mara Vishniac Kohn becomes the executor of Vishniac’s estate. Howard Greenberg Gallery
begins its twenty-five-year representation of Vishniac’s photographic work.
2007
The Roman Vishniac Archive is established at ICP in partnership with the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum
NOTE ON PRINTS
Throughout his career, Vishniac worked interchangeably with his Rolleiflex 120 and Leica
35mm cameras. Unless otherwise noted, all prints are inkjet prints, printed in 2012 from
Vishniac’s original film negatives.
Unless otherwise noted, all of the works and ephemera in the exhibition are from the
collection of the International Center of Photography, gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn.
NOTE ON CAPTIONS
The Vishniac archive includes more that 10,000 negatives, most of which have never been
seen or printed before, and were first digitized in the summer of 2012. As a result,
scholarship on the images is in its early stages and is being presented to the public for the
first time in this exhibition. New discoveries are being made every day and research is
ongoing as scholars gain access to this new material. We invite anyone with information or
identifications associated with any of the images displayed here to submit a comment to the
Roman Vishniac Archive at [email protected].
BERLIN STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
1920s-30s
Vishniac immigrated to Berlin in 1920, shortly after the formation of the Weimar Republic.
He and his wife Luta settled in the Wilmersdorf district, home to a large community of
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affluent Russian Jewish expatriates. Berlin in the 1920s was the epitome of a modern city:
cosmopolitan, loud, vibrant, diverse, and full of recent immigrants. Already an accomplished
amateur photographer, Vishniac joined several of the city’s ubiquitous camera clubs. Armed
with his Rolleiflex and Leica, he took to the streets, creating astute, often humorous
observations of his adopted city.
Vishniac’s interest in photography had begun during his childhood in Russia; many Russian
Jews owned photography shops and studios, and Vishniac’s family encouraged his pursuits.
In Berlin, his perspective as an outsider contributed to his inventive and dynamic images of
life in the city, and marked his transformation from amateur hobbyist to accomplished street
photographer. His best, most intimate photographs were often taken in his own
neighborhood, where he built a fully equipped photo-processing lab in his apartment.
Vishniac took full advantage of the city’s manifold resources, improving his technique and
experimenting with modernist and avant-garde approaches to framing and composition—
hallmarks of Weimar Berlin. This prodigious body of early work became increasingly
influenced by European modernism as he captured the buzzing day-to-day life of the city:
streetcar drivers, municipal workers and day laborers, marching students and children at play,
bucolic park scenes and the intellectual café life of the bustling metropolis that was, in
Vishniac’s words, “the world’s center of music, books, and science.”
Recalcitrance, Berlin, ca. 1929
Gelatin silver print
Vishniac’s most accomplished photographs of Berlin were often taken in his own
neighborhood, in the Wilmersdorf district that was home to a large number of prosperous
Russian Jewish expatriates. This image was taken from the foyer of a building that housed
the Lindenbad, a Russian bathhouse near the family’s apartment. Vishniac often positioned
himself in doorways or archways, a practice that he continued throughout his career,
navigating the new cities he traveled to and inhabited by watching street life from a removed
distance and capturing people, as they passed by, who were often unaware of the presence of
the camera.
[German family walking between taxicabs in front of the Ufa-Palast movie theater, Berlin],
1929–early 1930s
International Center of Photography, 2012
Until 1929, the Ufa-Palast, where director Fritz Lang premiered his groundbreaking Weimarera films, including Metropolis and M, was the largest and most famous movie theater in
Berlin. It was destroyed during World War II, as was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church,
seen in the background to the right, and later photographed by Vishniac during his 1947
return trip to Europe when he documented the destruction of Berlin.
Chimney sweep, Berlin, ca. 1929
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Vishniac documented the lives and experiences of workers, especially craftsmen and manual
laborers, throughout his career. The subject of this photograph, a chimney sweep, would
have been immediately recognizable to a German audience as a symbol of good luck, an
image that was often used on New Year’s greetings cards.
[Apprentice butchers celebrate graduation after passing their exams; the sign reads “We
made it!,” Hardenbergstrasse, Berlin], early 1930s
[Window washer balancing on a ladder, Berlin], mid-1930s
[Horse, Germany], 1929–early 1930s
Vishniac, looking down into his Rolleiflex camera’s viewfinder to frame the shot, is reflected
in the horse’s eye.
[Interior of the Anhalter Bahnhof railway terminus, near Potsdamer Platz, Berlin], 1929–
early 1930s
[Boys admiring a motorcycle, Brandenburg, outskirts of Berlin], 1929–early 1930s
[Vendors, probably Paris], 1929–early 1930s
[Girls participating in a Corpus Christi procession, Vienna or Berlin], 1930s
[Benedictine nun reading, probably France], 1930s
[Men walking past a gambling parlor under a sign that reads, “Don’t let luck pass you by,”
Wipplingerstrasse, Vienna], 1930s
[Woman washing windows above Nachfolger Mandtler & Neumann Speditionen (Mandtler
& Neumann Forwarding Agents), Ferdinandstrasse, Leopoldstadt, Vienna], 1930s
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Located in Leopoldstadt, a district of Vienna heavily populated by Jewish immigrants from
eastern Europe, the signs on the company’s facade advertise transportation, shipping, cargo,
and customs services to eastern and central Europe. Vishniac’s train journeys to eastern
Europe in the mid- to late 1930s originated in Berlin and usually included a stopover in
Vienna, where he often spent a day or two documenting the surrounding neighborhood of
Leopoldstadt, which was located near the Ostbahnhof, a train station that provided the
majority of eastward-bound connections from Austria’s capital.
[Sunlight streaming into Leipzig Central Station, Leipzig, Germany], 1929–early 1930s
People behind bars, Berlin Zoo, early 1930s
The oldest and most renowned zoo in Germany, the Zoologische Garten was a popular
gathering place for Berlin’s middle- and upper-class Jewish community before World War II.
Many affluent Jewish families, including the Vishniacs, were shareholders. Beginning in
1933, the zoo began to force out Jewish board members. In 1938, a sign reading “Juden
unerwünscht” (Jews Unwanted) was displayed at the entrance to the zoo and in early 1939 Jews
were denied entry entirely. In Vishniac’s photograph of the zoo’s famous polar bears, it
appears that the visitors, and not the animals, are in a cage.
Vitrine Labels
1
Studio of I. Diagovchenko, Court Photographer to the Russian Czar
[Roman Vishniac’s grandfather Wolf Wischniak, Moscow], ca. 1890s
Gelatin silver print cabinet card
Collection Mara Vishniac Kohn
2
Studio of I. Diagovchenko, Court Photographer to the Russian Czar
[Roman Vishniac’s grandmother Bella Vigdorovich, Moscow], ca. 1890s
3
Unidentified photographer
[Roman Vishniac’s father Solomon and grandfather Wolf, Saint Petersburg or Moscow], ca.
1910s
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4
Studio Paola, Moscow
[Roman Vishniac in school uniform, Moscow], ca. 1906
5
[Roman Vishniac, Moscow], ca. 1918
6-8
[Roman Vishniac’s wife Luta, Latvia], 1920
Roman Vishniac photographed his young bride during their honeymoon in Latvia, where
they spent several weeks recovering from an arduous journey from Russia to Riga, before
the couple moved to Berlin. Shot on hand-cut film with a Russian camera, these images are
among Vishniac’s earliest known photographs and establish his skill as an amateur
photographer prior to his arrival in Berlin.
9
[Roman Vishniac exercising, Berlin], 1920s
10
[Roman Vishniac at Lake Zell am See, Salzburg, Austria], 1928
11
[Roman Vishniac with a beer chalice, Berlin], ca. 1923
12
[Luta Vishniac, Berlin], March 1930
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13
[Luta Vishniac, Berlin], 1920s
14
[Roman and Luta Vishniac, Berlin], ca. early 1920s
15
[Roman Vishniac, Berlin], ca. 1920s
16
[Alexanderplatz, Berlin], ca. 1934
Vishniac took this photograph from the third floor of the recently constructed Berolinahaus.
The Wertheim department store and the Peter Behrens–designed Alexanderhaus are visible
in the background. The entire area was destroyed by bomb raids during World War II.
17
[Roman Vishniac and his daughter Mara, Wertheim department store, Berlin], ca. 1930
International Center of Photography, Gift of James Howard Fraser, 2011
This photograph was taken in the newly installed Fotoautomat (photo booth) located in the
flagship Wertheim department store in Berlin. Wertheim was among the largest and most
well-known department stores in prewar Germany. The chain’s innovative flagship location
on Leipziger Platz was constructed in 1896, featuring 83 elevators and a glass-roofed atrium.
Jewish owned, the Wertheim chain was a target of early Nazi boycotts. Mandatory
“Aryanization” policies soon followed, forcing an end to the businesses that had been built
by the Wertheim family over several decades. The Berlin store was severely damaged during
World War II, and later situated in the no man’s land between West and East Berlin.
18
[Roman Vishniac’s parents Manya and Solomon Wischniak, Wiesbaden, Germany], 1934
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19
[Wolf and Mara Vishniac, Berlin], ca. 1930
20
[Wolf and Mara Vishniac, Berlin], ca. 1930
Vitrine 2
1
[Berlin, Paris, and Vienna], ca. 1930s
Gelatin silver print contact sheet from original negatives
Vishniac rarely produced contact sheets of his negatives; the few that survive were often
made from unrelated, individual frames. This rare vintage contact sheet, consisting of twelve
individual Rolleiflex negative frames, focuses almost entirely on his Berlin street
photography.
2
[Mara and Wolf Vishniac in the Baltic Sea, Latvia], ca. 1934
3
[Mara Vishniac taking skating lessons, Berlin], ca. 1934
4
[Puppet theater party in the Vishniac family apartment, Berlin], ca. 1934
5
[Mara and Wolf Vishniac celebrate Purim with their friends, Berlin], ca. 1934
Mara Vishniac, fifth from left, Wolf Vishniac, second from right.
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NAZI RISE TO POWER
GERMANY, 1933–37
I grew up in Berlin with a pervasive sense of danger and dread combined with a perceived obligation not to
show fear. I was aware of personal danger and knew that whatever happened to me, my parents could offer no
protection or help. That was everyday life.
—Mara Vishniac Kohn
Vishniac’s development as a professional photographer coincided with the Nazi rise to
power and the establishment of the Third Reich. Widespread anti-Semitism and the
implementation of increasingly restrictive measures against Jews became daily realities.
Vishniac documented the ominous changes he encountered, photographing campaign
posters, swastika banners, phrenology shops, and marching Nazi soldiers. Following Hitler’s
appointment as chancellor in 1933, the government relentlessly pursued those artists and
intellectuals not in line with the Reich’s values. Berlin’s cosmopolitan vivacity was soon
drained of its intellectual and cultural capital. Once-vibrant neighborhoods became ruled by
fear; anyone considered an opponent of the Nazi government could be sent to Dachau, a
concentration camp established in 1933 outside Munich.
Many photographers suffered from the Nazi policies; the Schriftgesetz (Editorial Act) of
November 1933 forced anyone working in publishing—photographers included—to provide
proof of Aryan heritage. In 1934, the Deutsche Presse (German Press) published a list of
authorized Aryan photographers whose work aligned with the Nazi party. Jews were
forbidden to take photographs on the street. In spite of these restrictions, Vishniac
tenaciously documented Berlin’s rapid acclimation to Nazi policy. To avoid suspicion, he
often used his young daughter Mara as a prop, snapping seemingly innocuous pictures of her
in front of advertising columns and shop windows festooned with Nazi propaganda.
These symbols of oppression formed the quotidian backdrop of Vishniac’s Germany, a fact
to which the ubiquity of Nazi flags, banners, and posters in his later Berlin photographs
testify. Capturing the spread of Nazi ideology on Berlin’s streets, Vishniac’s images
embodied his own marginalization—and endangerment—as both a photographer and a Jew.
[Vishniac’s daughter Mara posing in front of a shop specializing in instruments that measure
the difference in size between Aryan and non-Aryan skulls, Berlin], 1933
In April 1933, the Nazi government issued a decree that codified the definition of a nonAryan, associating Aryan identity with biological characteristics. Vishniac’s photograph of his
daughter Mara, age seven, standing in front of a store previously owned by a Jew, includes a
window display exhibiting pamphlets on Aryan race theory and advertising an instrument
used to measure human heads, demonstrating that the Aryan skull is long and thin. The
window sign reads “Nurture [your] race!” and advertises an instrument invented by “race
researcher” R. Burger-Villingen that measures the cranium facial features to prove one’s
Aryan race. A poster in the store window promotes an organization founded in 1933 to
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disseminate Nazi ideology among the German middle classes and to enforce the boycott of
Jewish businesses.
BAUER
[Poster of President Paul von Hindenburg and Chancellor Adolf Hitler: Der Marschall und
der Gefreite Kämpfen mit uns für Frieden und Gleichberechtigung (The Marshal and the
Corporal: Fight with Us for Peace and Equal Rights)], 1933
Offset lithography
Printed by Selle Eysler, Berlin; issued by the
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei (National Socialist German Worker Party)
International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2012
[Vishniac’s daughter Mara posing in front of an election poster for Hindenburg and Hitler
that reads “The Marshal and the Corporal: Fight with Us for Peace and Equal Rights,”
Wilmersdorf, Berlin], 1933
Vishniac’s daughter Mara, age seven, was photographed standing in front of this 1933 poster
celebrating Hitler’s recent appointment as German chancellor. The poster advertises a
plebiscite to permit withdrawal from the League of Nations and Geneva Disarmament
Conference, which restricted Germany’s ability to develop a military. Other posters include
the slogans “Mothers, fight for your children!,” “The coming generation accuses you!,” and
“In 8 months…2,250,000 countrymen able to put food on the table. Bolshevism destroyed.
Sectionalism overcome. A kingdom and order of cleanliness built…Those are the
achievements of Hitler’s rule…”
[Nazi soldiers marching next to the Arsenal in front of the Berlin Cathedral], ca. 1935
[Street scene with a swastika flag on a storefront (at left), Berlin], ca. 1935
[Women walking with a baby carriage, Berlin], ca. 1935
Vishniac often positioned himself in doorways or building foyers in his Berlin street
photography, documenting daily life as a removed observer. This image reveals multiple
layers of time in one shot: the car positioned alongside the horse-drawn wagon, bicyclists
speeding by as pedestrians young and old navigate the cobblestones and pavement, against
the backdrop of a rapidly modernizing metropolis. Only upon closer examination can the
viewer notice a swastika flag blowing in the wind above the horses; such flags and banners
were a common sight on most Berlin streets by 1935.
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[Man standing in front of the Silesian Homeland Clubhouse and pub; a swastika is painted
on the wall to the right, Berlin], mid-1930s
The Schlesische Heimatstube (Silesian Homeland clubhouse and pub), celebrated the
heritage of German speakers from Silesia, a border region between Germany, Poland, and
Czechoslovakia. Regional clubhouses such as this provided forums for the expression of
ethnic, regional, and national identity rooted in the land. For non-Germans, including
Vishniac, the ubiquitous celebrations of a German “fatherland” or “homeland” represented
barriers to belonging in German society that became increasingly ominous as the Nazis rose
to power.
[Children playing on a street lined with swastika flags, probably outskirts of Berlin], mid1930s
During the Summer Olympic Games, Wittenbergplatz, Berlin, 1936
The 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic Games provided the Nazi regime with an ideal venue for
the propagation of racial ideology by casting the achievements of German athletes in the
games as emblematic of Aryan racial supremacy. The Nazis, all too aware that this was
happening on a world stage, hired filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to document the Olympics,
resulting in the modernist documentary film Olympia, which compared the German athletes
to the idealized Greek athletes of the original Olympic games. Jewish athletes were
prohibited from participating on the German team. During the games, African American
sprinter and long-jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals, frustrating Nazi attempts to
portray the superiority of the Aryan race.
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Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid (Trust No Fox in the Green
Meadow and No Jew on His Oath)
By Elvira Bauer, illustrated by Philipp Rupprecht
Nuremberg: Stürmer-Verlag, 1936
Facsimile
Courtesy Mara Vishniac Kohn
Children’s books were a central tool in the Nazi propaganda machine’s wide-ranging
distribution of anti-Semitic material. Publications like this were intended to instruct children
on the dangerous influence of Jews, here through stereotyped and grotesque renderings of
Jewish adults, professionals, and children.
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Julius Streicher, a trained elementary school teacher, founded Der Stürmer (The
Stormtrooper), an anti-Semitic tabloid newspaper, in Nuremberg in 1923. After the Nazi rise
to power in 1933, Streicher enjoyed official endorsement; copies of Der Stürmer appeared
prominently in public, low-hanging outdoor display cases throughout Germany, easily visible
to children. One illustration shows children looking at Der Stürmer display cases (top); the
headlines include “How the Jew lies!” and “Against miscegenation.” Der Stürmer portrayed
Jews as sexually depraved, physically grotesque, and murderously greedy; this volume,
illustrated by popular Der Stürmer cartoonist Philipp Rupprecht and advertised as an ideal
Christmas gift, extended this mission to children. In one scene (bottom), Jewish children and
teachers are taunted by their former classmates and colleagues as they are thrown out of an
“Aryanized” school. The book went through seven editions and over 100,000 copies were
printed.
8
Verso of gelatin silver print with sticker, 1937
The stamp reads “First Jewish Amateur Photography Competition Frankfurt am Main
1937.” Vishniac submitted a photograph of a stork (recto) to a national Jewish photography
competition in Frankfurt in 1937, as indicated by the blue sticker with camera and Jewish
star design. Such specifically Jewish competitions and camera clubs were formed as a
response to Jewish photographers’ exclusion from other photographic clubs and contests.
9
Roman Vishniac’s family membership card for the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (Culture
League of German Jews), 1938–39
Facsimile
10
Roman Vishniac’s family membership card for the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (Culture
League of German Jews), 1938–39
Facsimile
As a response to forced exclusion from cultural life following Hitler’s 1933 rise to power,
German Jews founded the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden in order to maintain the activities of
the community’s artists, musicians, and actors. Although it, too, came under the control of
the Reich Ministry for Propaganda and Popular Entertainment in 1935, its lectures,
exhibitions, and performances nonetheless enriched the lives of German Jews under Nazi
oppression.
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11
Mara Vishniac’s membership card for the Werkleute Bund Jüdischer Jugend (Working
People, or League of Jewish Youth), September 1, 1937
Facsimile
Formed in 1922 to promote fellowship among young German Jews through social action,
physical activity, and intellectual engagement, the Bund Deutsch-Jüdischer Jugend (League
of German Jewish Youth) was formed for the purpose of self-defense and solidarity against
Nazi anti-Semitism. Forced to change its name to the League of Jewish Youth, or Werkleute
(Working People), after the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, it was entirely banned in 1937, but
continued its work underground.
12
Johann Marr
Men of the Time No. 91: The Dictator Adolf Hitler, 1938
Postcard
This postcard, included in Vishniac’s paper archive, celebrates Nazi Germany’s “annexation”
of the Sudetenland, a German-speaking territory of Czechoslovakia, and the beginning of
Hitler’s takeover of surrounding territories. Such postcards were disseminated throughout
Germany to drum up enthusiasm for the Nazi war machine.
13
Official mortgage deed for a Berlin rental property owned by Solomon and Manya Vishniac,
May 13, 1937
This mortgage deed indicates the relocation of Solomon and Manya Vishniac, parents of
Roman Vishniac, to Nice in the first half of 1937, in response to rapidly increasing antiSemitic persecution in Nazi Germany and the Aryanization of Jewish-owned property and
businesses.
GERMAN JEWISH RELIEF AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS
BERLIN, MID- TO LATE 1930S
Prior to Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933, Jewish social service organizations in
Germany primarily served eastern European Jews, the majority of whom were less
cosmopolitan, assimilated, and affluent than their German-born coreligionists. The Nazi
regime recognized no such distinction, however, and their rise to power drastically affected
almost every Jew living in Germany. As Germany’s Jewish population was gradually
excluded from both social and economic life, many came to depend upon a Jewish social
structure that was originally intended to look outward but quickly expanded to serve the
growing needs of the community.
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In 1933, German Jewish groups unified into the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden
(Central Organization of German Jews), an umbrella organization intended to ameliorate the
effects of Nazi racial policy. Between 1933 and 1938, subsidiary and affiliate organizations
created Jewish education and healthcare systems and instituted a welfare system for Jews
facing impoverishment. Zionist and other youth organizations flourished under the
exclusionary policies of the Nazis, helping would-be émigrés learn the agricultural and
vocational skills needed to build new lives in Palestine and elsewhere. The Jüdischer
Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural Association) was established in response to restrictions placed
on Jewish artists. Vishniac and his family were among its 70,000 members and regularly
attended lectures and performances. Vishniac was also a member of T’munah, a Jewish
photographic group founded in 1934 in response to the exclusionary policies of “Aryan”
camera clubs.
As restrictions on photographers increased, Vishniac was commissioned to document the
work of several Jewish community and social service organizations in Berlin. This fascinating
body of work is largely unknown, but it helped establish his reputation in Jewish
philanthropic circles, leading to major commissions from a wide range of Jewish relief and
community organizations from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s.
[Emigration applicant meeting with a representative of the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden
(Aid Society of German Jews), Ludendorffstrasse, Schöneberg Berlin], ca. 1937–38
The Berlin-based Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden (Aid Society of German Jews) oversaw all
Jewish emigration from Germany with the exception of immigration to Palestine. The
Hilfsverein’s Information Bureau provided services, advice, and aid to German Jews seeking
to emigrate; daily consultations increased exponentially throughout the 1930s. By September
1939, 282,000 Jews, over half of Germany’s Jewish population in 1933, had emigrated.
[Preparing food in a Jewish soup kitchen, Berlin], mid- to late 1930s
[Jüdische Oberschule (Jewish Middle School) classroom of the Jüdische Gemeinde (Jewish
Community), Grosse Hamburgerstrasse, Berlin], ca. 1936
Although Jewish children were not officially prohibited from attending non-Jewish schools
until 1938, institutionalized anti-Semitism and aggression made it impossible for most Jewish
students to attend “Aryan” schools by the mid-1930s. As a result, enrollment at exclusively
Jewish schools like the Jüdische Oberschule grew exponentially. The experience of German
Jewish students paralleled that of Jewish teachers and university faculty, who were prohibited
from practicing their professions as part of the Aryanization of the German education
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system. The highly regarded Jüdische Oberschule was later used as a site for the deportation
of Jews to concentration camps.
[Children wrestling outside a Jewish soup kitchen, Berlin], mid- to late 1930s
Unlike soup kitchens for the poor, Mittelstand Küchen served the German Jewish middle-class,
providing tablecloths, silverware, and entertainment in addition to nourishment. As a result
of mounting anti-Semitism and wide-reaching Nazi racial policies, many middle-class
German Jews became impoverished in the 1930s. By retaining aspects of middle-class life,
Mittelstand Küchen helped them maintain their pride while benefiting from community
assistance.
[Boy learning to milk cows by using a model of a cow’s udders, Niederschönhausen, an
occupational training camp for German Jews hoping to emigrate, Pankow, Berlin], mid- to
late 1930s
Beginning in 1933, the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (Central Organization of
German Jews), working with Zionist organizations, sponsored Umschulung (occupational
retraining) camps throughout Germany for Jews hoping to emigrate, mostly to Palestine.
Many host countries would only admit Jewish immigrants with artisanal, agricultural, or
engineering skills, thus for German Jewish merchants and professionals, retraining often
became necessary. As an adaptive response, numerous Jewish vocational and occupational
schools developed curricula to quickly retrain and certify Jewish hopeful immigrants.
Niederschönhausen, one example of these camps, offered courses in metalworking,
woodworking, and agrarian skills.
[Boys learning metalwork techniques, Niederschönhausen, an occupational training camp for
German Jews hoping to emigrate, Pankow, Berlin], mid- to late 1930s
[Physician examining a patient’s chest in a Jewish health clinic, Berlin], mid- to late 1930s
In 1933, the Nazi regime began to systematically disenfranchise and exclude Jewish doctors
from practicing their professions, and passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional
Civil Service, which gradually prevented Jews from entering medical school or practicing at
Aryan hospitals. Jews were expelled from the National Health Insurance, and, in 1938, it
became illegal for Jewish doctors to treat non-Jewish patients. As a result, the German
Jewish community established clinics for Jewish patients, staffed by Jewish doctors and
nurses terminated from their previous positions.
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Vishniac, holding his Leica camera, is reflected in the medicine cabinet.
[Morning assembly at Gut Winkel, a training farm for German Jewish youth hoping to
immigrate to Palestine, Spreenhagen in der Mark, Brandenburg, Germany], ca. 1938
In the 1920s, German Jewish department store magnate Salman Schocken converted his
large Brandenburg estate into Gut Winkel, an agricultural training farm where Jewish youth
learned farming skills. In the 1930s, Gut Winkel focused on training Zionist youth by
teaching them vital skills and preparing them for eventual emigration and for their new lives
as pioneers in Palestine. The farm provided practical and theoretical instruction in farming
and communal living to a large group of mostly urban, cosmopolitan city youth. The
participants also spent time each day studying the Hebrew language and history of Zionism.
The Nazis forcibly closed Gut Winkel in June 1941.
[Woman on kitchen duty, Gut Winkel, a training farm for German Jewish youth hoping to
immigrate to Palestine, Spreenhagen in der Mark, Brandenburg, Germany], ca. 1938
[Drawer of freshly farmed eggs, Gut Winkel, a training farm for German Jewish youth
hoping to immigrate to Palestine, Spreenhagen in der Mark, Brandenburg, Germany], ca.
1938
NOTE ON LOCATIONS AND DATING
Vishniac’s photographs of eastern Europe are the result of a commissioned assignment by
the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) from ca. 1935 to 1938. The dates of his
travels to specific towns and cities, which covered more than 5,000 miles over four years,
and the history of his relationship with the JDC are the subject of ongoing research.
Vishniac did not create a numbering or index system for his negatives, which were often cut
into individual frames. In 2012, his entire body of negatives was digitized by ICP and is now
publicly available on a shared digital database with our partners at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. Collaborating with an international community of scholars,
students, curators, and researchers, who are able to access this material for the first time,
work is underway to resolve the locations, dates, and captions of Vishniac’s eastern
European work.
As a result of political upheaval and geographic shifts that took place during the period of
Vishniac’s commission in eastern Europe, borders changed and city names often had several
spelling variations, including Russian, German, Yiddish, and Polish. All of the location
names and spellings in this exhibition are derived from the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum’s Geographic Fact Finder (resources.ushmm.org/ geoff), which provides
1937 standardized spellings (for example, Wilno rather than Vilnius, Lithuania). We invite
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visitors with location identifications associated with these images to submit a comment to
the Roman Vishniac Archive at [email protected].
JEWISH LIFE IN EASTERN EUROPE
CA. 1935-38
In 1935, Roman Vishniac was hired by the European headquarters of the Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC)—the world’s largest Jewish relief organization—to document
impoverished Jewish communities in eastern Europe. Faced with rising unemployment,
widespread poverty, anti-Semitic boycotts, and the tightening of immigration restrictions
throughout the 1930s, the JDC needed to establish new machinery for administering relief
and new avenues of fundraising to support it. Photographic images offered limitless,
affordable reproducibility, and could be used in slide lectures, brochures, appeals, and annual
reports throughout America and western Europe. After seeing Vishniac’s work on German
Jewish relief organizations, the JDC hired him to undertake dozens of trips to eastern
Europe. Over the following four years, his photographs played a crucial role in
communicating the JDC’s message, and they would ultimately become the last extensive
photographic record by a single photographer of Jewish communities that had existed for
centuries.
The majority of Vishniac’s published photographs of eastern Europe depict privation:
children and families suffering under the crippling effects of war, dislocation, boycotts, and
anti-Semitism. Many others illustrate the philanthropic activities of the JDC such as
children’s camps, free loan societies, soup kitchens, schools, and health organizations. And
while Vishniac is often associated with images of rural villages and small towns, or shtetlach,
most of his photographs record urban poverty in major cities like Warsaw, Krakow, and
Lodz. Vishniac’s work for the JDC echoes the contemporaneous projects of American
photographers like Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein, and Walker Evans. In the
same years that the Farm Security Administration sent photographers to the American South
and West to document those affected by drought, depression, and migration, Vishniac was
sent east by the JDC. Today, Vishniac’s work stands alongside the best social-documentary
photographers of his era. His unpublished work imparts a much more complex and nuanced
perspective on eastern European Jewish life, and reveals a much more versatile—and
modern—artist.
[Anti-Semitic demonstration by members of Poland’s right-wing nationalist party giving the
Nazi salute, Jewish district of Warsaw], ca. 1937–38
In the 1930s, several members of Poland’s government sought to scapegoat the large Jewish
population for the country’s economic woes. The Polish Endecja (National Democracy)
party organized pogroms and promoted anti-Semitic measures and dictatorship. In 1935,
after the death of influential Polish leader and former chief of state Jozef Pilsudski, who
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opposed the anti-Semitic policies of the National Democrats, the situation of Jews in
Warsaw rapidly deteriorated. Calls for the establishment of separate seating for Jews,
boycotts of Jewish shops, and anti-Semitic violence became commonplace, and undermined
the security and stability of Warsaw’s Jewish community, then numbering 400,000, roughly
one-third of the city’s population. In 1935, Vishniac was sent by the Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC) to document the crippling effects of the Polish anti-Semitic
boycotts, focusing his lens on impoverished shopkeepers, destroyed shops and market stalls,
porters, people who had lost their jobs, and children living in horrible conditions.
Photographs of similar Polish anti-Semitic demonstrations are located in the archives of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Entrance to Kazimierz, the Jewish district of Krakow, ca. 1935–38
Grandfather and granddaughter, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
Vishniac’s description of this grandfather and granddaughter includes a conversation that he
overheard between the two about the difficulty of finding work and the ongoing struggle to
make a living during the Polish anti-Semitic boycotts. This is among Vishniac’s most
celebrated and widely reproduced images, and was selected by Henri Cartier-Bresson as
among his “favorites.”
[Wife of Nat Gutman, a porter, Warsaw], ca. 1935–38
Platinum print
[Young girl returning from the store with a pot of soup and a bottle of milk, Lodz], ca.
1935–38
A fundraising advertisement for the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) reproduced
this image with the caption: “A Bottle of Milk Brings Joy to the face of this child, one of
70,000 Polish school children fed daily with the aid of the Joint Distribution Committee.
The JDC also maintains clinics and summer health camps in Poland and Rumania.
Illuminating is the story of the little girl who was discovered taking her cod liver oil capsules
home. ‘Mother needs them more than I do,’ she explained.”
[Grandmother and grandchildren in basement dwelling, Krochmalna Street, Warsaw], ca.
1935–38
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Vishniac documented urban poverty in Warsaw, often focusing on the dark, cold basement
dwellings of families where hungry Jewish children lived in crowded conditions. Vishniac
photographed this woman taking care of her grandchildren while their parents searched for
work in one of 26 basement compartments, each inhabited by a large family. In June 1941,
the National Jewish Monthly published this image with the caption “Polish Jewry, once the
bulwark of world Jewry, is done for as a community. Even if Hitler were to lose power
tomorrow, their institutions and organizations are hopelessly smashed, could not be rebuilt
in generations. But individuals remain, starved and persecuted. This picture shows an old
grandmother and her grandchildren. What is going to become of them, and of the millions
of other innocent victims of Fascist violence and terror?”
[Students gathering outside the yeshiva of Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz, Mukacevo], ca. 1937–
38
The notice on the wall reads “Come Celebrate Chanukah.” These men are selling old clothes, Kazimierz,
Krakow, ca. 1935–38
Platinum print
Shoes are hung to dry each night, Bialystok or Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
Collection Howard Greenberg
[Malnourished child eating a crust of bread in the TOZ (Society for Safeguarding the Health
of the Jewish Population) summer camp in Otwock, near Warsaw], ca. 1935-37
The Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population (TOZ) was established in
Warsaw in 1921 to unite the Polish branches of the Saint Petersburg–based Society for the
Protection of Jewish Health (OZE). TOZ promoted preventive measures against infectious
disease, such as smallpox vaccines, and also addressed the socioeconomic roots of disease,
including pervasive poverty, malnutrition, and unsanitary living conditions. Vishniac
photographed TOZ’s headquarters in Warsaw and summer camps in Slonim and Otwock to
assist with their fundraising efforts and to promote the activities of the camp to Jewish
donors abroad. With the support of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), TOZ
continued to operate after the German invasion of Poland, and attempted to continue its
activities in the Nazi ghettos in Poland until 1942.
Vishniac’s reflection, holding his Rolleiflex camera, can be seen in the young girl’s eyes.
[Children playing outdoors and watching a game, TOZ (Society for Safeguarding the Health
of the Jewish Population) summer camp, Otwock, near Warsaw], ca. 1935-37
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[Girl in plaid dress, Mukacevo], ca. 1935–38
Children seeking light and air outside their basement home, Krochmalna Street, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
Krochmalna Street, named for a starch factory that had been located there in the eighteenth
century, was home to some of Warsaw’s poorest Jews. Nobel Laureate and Yiddish writer
Isaac Bashevis Singer lived on the street as a child and set many of his stories there; the
orphanage of the famous Jewish educator Janus Korczak was located at No. 92. Until 1942,
part of Krochmalna was incorporated into the Warsaw Ghetto.
Basement home of a porter and his family, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
[Egress from a network of multi-family basement dwellings, Krochmalna Street, Warsaw],
ca. 1935–38
[Boy with kindling in a basement dwelling, Krochmalna Street, Warsaw], ca. 1935–38
This previously unpublished photograph attests to Vishniac’s bold and innovative use of
composition: the slim, vertical register of kindling wood, offset by a corner of Yiddish
newspaper on a table and triangle of lace at the window, is balanced by the young boy’s
sideways glance peering out from the corner of the frame, reflecting a modern sensibility not
usually associated with Vishniac’s work in eastern Europe.
[Sara, sitting in bed in a basement dwelling, with stenciled flowers above her head, Warsaw],
ca. 1935–37
Platinum print
Vishniac documented the basement dwellings of Warsaw using the scant natural light that
trickled through a few narrow, high windows. This required him to shoot during the day,
when adults were often out looking for work or peddling their wares and children were
sometimes the only inhabitants indoors. This photograph of Sara, one of Vishniac’s most
iconic images, was reproduced on charity tins, or tzedakah boxes, and circulated throughout
France by Jewish social service organizations, including the Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee (JDC) in the late 1930s.
Father enters, his face looks tired. Will there be a meal today? [Krochmalna Street, Warsaw], ca.
1935–38
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This board and caption were created in New York in the early 1940s for one of Vishniac’s
early shows in the United States, either the 1942 exhibition Life Everywhere, at the New
School for Social Research, or the 1943 exhibition Children of Want and Fear: Europe Before the
War, at the Teachers College, Columbia University.
Haberdashery in the open market, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
The subject of this unpublished print, a woman operating a haberdashery in the outdoor
market of Warsaw, contrasts with many of Vishniac’s well-known images of observant
Jewish male shopkeepers, often reproduced with captions describing their empty shelves,
lack of customers, and the unbearable effects of the anti-Semitic boycotts. Here, a selfassured woman fixes her slightly stern gaze directly on the photographer, while an observant
man in an adjacent stall tries to make a sale. The stalls and shelves overflow with
merchandise, towers of ribbon and a platter of spools perch on the edge of the counter, and
a thick band of empty countertop diagonally bisects the picture, creating a thoroughly
modern composition.
Some of Vishniac’s best photographs of women were never published, possibly because
Jewish women were not as easily identifiable by their dress as were religious Jewish men.
This remarkable portrait, reminiscent of Brassaï’s best work, raises questions about the
gendered nature of our understanding of prewar eastern European Jewish life.
The general store [eastern Europe], ca. 1935–38
Collection Philip Allen
[Interior courtyard of a home on Nalewki Street, a shopping area in a Jewish district of
Warsaw], ca. 1935–38
Porter Nat Gutman, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, International Fund for Concerned Photography,
1974
[Vendor selling apples on Gęsia Street, one of the main thoroughfares in a Jewish district of
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Carrier of heavy loads, Lodz, ca. 1935–38
The full negative frame of this image includes two men: a day laborer in tattered clothing,
seen here, and a man wearing a fine suit, tie, and hat, holding a briefcase on the left. The
well-dressed man was cropped out of this, the only extant print made of the photograph,
providing insight into Vishniac’s editorial choices in representing Jewish life in eastern
Europe. The 120 original negative is a perfect square, yet the resulting print is a tightly
cropped rectangle.
Exhausted. A carrier of heavy loads, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
Villagers in the Carpathian Mountains, ca. 1935–38
Vishniac traveled to remote Jewish villages in rural Carpathian Ruthenia throughout the late
1930s, and in many cases was the only photographer to ever document these communities,
which had been isolated for hundreds of years, yet maintained an enduring connection to
Jewish observance, customs, and traditions.
Every detail of this image makes it a nearly perfect photograph: the sense of movement and
the figures’ varied gestures and vibrant expressions; the carefully balanced horizontal bands
of shadow and striped fabric; the detail of a woman peering out of a window while a glass
pane on the facing structure points in the direction of an impossibly angled triangular
building that vertically divides the frame in half; and the collective sense of surprise at
encountering the photographer. Like much of Vishniac’s unpublished work, this
composition recalls Henri Cartier-Bresson’s description of the decisive moment (a precise
organization of forms that give a time and place its ideal expression) and places Vishniac on
a par with the great photographers of the twentieth century.
[Woman in entryway, Satu Mare], ca. 1935–38
This recently discovered vintage print includes an annotation in Vishniac’s hand, “Satu
Mare,” referencing the town that is the seat of the Satmar Hasidic sect. Significantly,
Vishniac’s photograph captures a relatively secular subject—a young woman in modern
dress and hairstyle smiling directly at the photographer—in a town commonly associated
with the most rigid observance of ultra-Orthodox Jewish practices. Although this is the only
identified image of Satu Mare by Vishniac, it is likely that he took more than one shot during
his visit, and that the archive contains other negative frames awaiting identification. This
image and others like it contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the prevalence and
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intermixing of secular life in observant communities in eastern Europe prior to World War
II.
[Waiting for service, Lask or Lodz], ca. 1935–38
[Shoe workshop, eastern Europe], ca. 1935–38
[Requesting a loan in the offices of the local Gmiles Hesed (Free Loan Society), probably
Jewish Free Loan Societies were supported by local and international relief organizations,
particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which focused the bulk of its
efforts on Jewish communities in central and eastern Europe. In 1930s Poland, where many
of the largest Free Loan Societies were concentrated, small loans were often used to
purchase equipment and goods for Jewish merchants and artisans to help maintain their
livelihood during Poland’s anti-Semitic boycotts. The JDC published brochures, annual
reports, and newsletters about the Free Loan Societies, updating funders on the
demographics of those being helped each year. Vishniac, whose images illustrated several of
the JDC reports, photographed a Free Loan Society office in Warsaw, one of 1,200 that had
been established by the JDC in Poland.
[Yeshiva student brushing his coat for Sabbath evening services, Mukacevo], ca. 1935–38
TOP ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT
[Member of a porter’s cooperative delivering charcoal, Warsaw], ca. 1935–38
[Man purchasing herring, wrapped in newspaper, for a Sabbath meal, Mukacevo], ca. 1935–
38
[Jewish boy, eastern Europe], ca. 1935–38
In every box, a pair of shoes, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
BOTTOM ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT
Each passerby raises hope, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
Housewife returning home, Jewish district of Lublin, ca. 1935–38
[Traveling salesmen returning home for the Sabbath, Mukacevo], ca. 1935–38
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[Entrance to the historic court of Rabbi Gedaliah, Jewish district of Lublin], ca. 1935–38
Gelatin silver prints
TOP ROW, RIGHT TO LEFT
[Salesman sleeping on a bench in a railroad car to save lodging expenses, eastern Europe], ca.
1935–38
After morning services on the Sabbath, Kazimierz, Krakow, ca. 1935–38
[Meeting point of the high and low streets in the Jewish quarter, Bratislava], ca. 1935–38
She would rather have it for her own family!, Uzhorod, Carpathian Ruthenia, ca. 1935–38
Secondhand dealer and stamp collector, Bratislava, ca. 1935–38
BOTTOM ROW, RIGHT TO LEFT
Youngsters adopted cattle as personal friends, Carpathian Ruthenia, ca. 1935–38
[Three Jewish boys, Mukacevo], ca. 1935–38
Waiting for customers, Mukacevo, ca. 1935–38
[Man pulling a cow down the street, eastern Europe], ca. 1935–38
[Father taking his son to the first day of cheder (Jewish elementary school), Mukacevo], ca.
1935–38
[Inside the Jewish quarter, Bratislava], ca. 1935–38
[Children playing in the Jewish quarter, Bratislava], ca. 1935–38
[Three women, Mukacevo], ca. 1935–38
[Jewish schoolchildren, Mukacevo], ca. 1935–38
International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, International Fund for Concerned Photography,
1974
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From 1935 to 1938, Vishniac made numerous trips to the city of Mukacevo, a major center
of religious learning among Jews from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Carpathian region.
Mukacevo was widely known for its famous rabbis and yeshivot (religious schools). This image
of Jewish schoolchildren appears in cropped form on the cover of Vishniac’s first
posthumous publication, To Give Them Light; the recently digitized negative reveals that it
represents only one-fifth of the full frame. Vishniac often directed printers or publishers to
crop his images to focus on religiously observant Jewish men or boys, identifiable by their
dress, an editorial decision that sometimes detracted from the composition by subverting
aesthetic considerations to emphasize religious and observant life. The negative reveals
Vishniac’s instinctive compositional acumen: a bustling and vibrant street scene, with a boy’s
beaming, slightly out-of-focus face in the foreground and numerous hands pushing into and
out of the frame, communicating the vitality and liveliness of the students.
To Give Them Light: The Legacy of Roman Vishniac. With a preface by Elie Wiesel and edited by
Marion Wiesel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993
[Anti-Semitic boycotts in Poland transformed peddlers into beggars, Lodz, Lublin, or
Porters, Warsaw, ca. 1935–38
[Jewish refugee in military barracks that have been converted to living quarters, Polish
detention camp in Zbaszyn], November 1938
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On October 27, 1938, the German police and military arrested 17,000 Jews of Polish
nationality or descent and forcibly transported them to the Polish border. The Polish
authorities refused to admit them and roughly 9,000 Jews, including children, pregnant
women, the elderly and infirm, were trapped in the small Polish border town of Zbaszyn,
where they lived in filthy horse stables and abandoned military barracks as winter fast
approached. Disease was rampant, and many died of pneumonia. Vishniac later described
Zbaszyn as “a no man’s land.” The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) quickly
responded, creating a refugee camp, and commissioned Vishniac to document the plight of
Zbaszyn’s refugees.
Distraught by the suffering of his parents at Zbaszyn, Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born
Jew of Polish descent, went to the German Embassy in Paris and assassinated Nazi official
Ernst vom Rath. German authorities used the assassination as a pretext for Kristallnacht, the
Night of Broken Glass, an anti-Semitic pogrom that took place throughout Germany on
November 9–10, 1938.
At the end of October 1938, thousands of Polish Jews residing in Germany were forcibly repatriated by the
Nazis. They were temporarily housed in military barracks in Zbaszyn, Poland, November 1938
[Jewish refugees in a makeshift outdoor kitchen, Polish detention camp, Zbaszyn],
November 1938
[Jewish refugees doing laundry, Polish detention camp, Zbaszyn], November 1938
[Nettie Stub, eleven years old, from Hanover, in a Polish detention camp, Zbaszyn],
November 1938
Vishniac’s photograph of Nettie Stub, taken in Zbaszyn, was put on the wire along with
several of his Zbaszyn photographs and picked up by the Red Cross. Later that year, Stub
was rescued and brought to safety in Sweden by the Red Cross, along with several other
children. In 1983, Stub, then living in the Bronx as Nettie Katz, noticed this picture of
herself in Vishniac’s seminal publication A Vanished World. She contacted the photographer
and told him that she believed the Red Cross chose to save her because of his photograph.
LEFT
[David Eckstein, seven years old, and classmates in cheder (Jewish elementary school),
Brod], ca. 1938
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Charles O. Slavens
[David Eckstein, Woodstock, New York], ca. 1970
Courtesy Charles O. Slavens
RIGHT
David Eckstein Shoah Testimony
Digitized from beta cam tapes; running time: 20:17
The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Collection, International Center of Photography
The boy in this photograph has been identified as David Eckstein, a Holocaust survivor
currently living in a commune in the American Southwest. Born in 1930 in the small town of
Brod, Eckstein was seven years old when Vishniac took several photographs of him, his
classmates, and his teacher just before the onslaught of World War II. Vishniac later recalled,
“I watched this little boy for almost an hour, and in this moment I saw the whole sadness of
the world.” This portrait was later selected as the cover of Vishniac’s first publication, Polish
Jews: A Pictorial Record (1947), and reprinted on the cover of I. B. Singer’s National Book
Award–winning collection of stories, A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw
(1969).
Eckstein survived five concentration camps, including Bergen-Belsen in Germany and
Auschwitz II–Birkenau in Poland, and was liberated by the Soviet armed forces. His entire
family, with the exception of one sibling, was murdered in the Holocaust. He came to
America in the early 1950s, via Israel, and eventually settled in Woodstock, New York, where
he became a Buddhist. In 1997, Eckstein recorded his memories of life before, during, and
after the war for the University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation. An excerpt
of the interview, focusing on his childhood at the time Vishniac made this iconic portrait, is
shown here. The complete interview is available through the USC Shoah Foundation or by
visiting the Roman Vishniac Archive at ICP.
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[Chaim Simcha Mechlowitz, a farmer and tanner, Vysni Apsa, Carpathian Ruthenia], ca. 1938
Unidentified Photographer
[Family photograph of Chaim Simcha Mechlowitz, his wife Etel, and six of their children],
ca. 1935–38
Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum / Lisa Wahler
In March 1944, Germany seized control of Hungary and began transporting the Jewish
population of Carpathian Ruthenia, including Chaim Mechlowitz, his wife Etel, and eight of
their children, to Auschwitz. Chaim, Etel, and all but one of their children were killed there.
Four of Mechlowitz’s children from his first marriage survived the war. Chaim’s
granddaughter recently donated photographs of Mechlowitz and his family, made around the
time that Vishniac took his iconic images of the farmer, to the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum.
Nettie Stub, David Eckstein, and Chaim Mechlowitz are among the more than four dozen
people photographed by Vishniac to have been identified. Extensive interviews with
surviving subjects or family members were conducted and related documents, family
photographs, and other materials have been collected by the Vishniac Archive at ICP. As the
number of living survivors of the Holocaust dwindles, ICP's efforts to identify individuals
and communities documented by the photographer come at a critical time in preserving this
history for future generations.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT
Fish is the favored food for the kosher table, eastern Europe, ca. 1935–38
Weavers’ Factory, Lask, ca. 1935–38
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Paradise on earth, TOZ [Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population] camp in
Otwock, near Warsaw, ca. 1935–37
Jewish youth, Mukacevo, ca. 1935–38
Collection Philip Allen
These rare vintage prints are part of a collection of sixteen recently discovered prints that
comprised Vishniac’s first exhibition abroad, and were displayed in the New York office of
the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in 1938. Vishniac developed these early
prints in his apartment in Berlin, and they are rare early examples of his virtuosic skill as a
master printmaker. He gifted all sixteen prints to an employee of the New York office of the
JDC who had helped him to organize his first exhibit; these prints are on loan from his son.
The image of a boy bending over a vat of herring communicates the excitement of the
marketplace and the sheer abundance of herring. The unparalleled quality of the print
transmits every detail, from the wet cobblestones and circular motion of the swimming fish
to the rapid, eager movement of hands reaching in to grab the herring. Rather than focusing
on religious life, these early prints demonstrate the vitality and frantic charm of a town
rushing to prepare for the Sabbath.
Carpathian Ruthenia, ca. 1938
Digitized from 16mm original footage; running time: 17:30
International Center of Photography, Courtesy Moving Image Research Collections, University of South
Carolina, Roman Vishniac Science Film Collection
In 1938 the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) commissioned Vishniac to make
films of the remote Carpathian Jewish villages and Galician towns he had been documenting
for the relief organization in still photographs since 1935. Although the films were lost
during the upheavals of the war, outtakes recently resurfaced, documenting the rural and
observant Jewish farming communities that had been isolated for hundreds of years.
In his still photographs, Vishniac often depicted yeshiva boys engaged in religious study; in
the film footage, the same students congregate on the street as they rib, elbow, and joke with
each other. Older men, so often photographed praying or in portraits that convey sagacious
wisdom and contemplation, are filmed working the land and engaging in manual labor while
dressed in traditional clothes. In one outtake, children watch as their teacher strikes a match,
lights a cigarette, and tosses the match to the floor during a lesson. This is the only known
footage of its kind, animating a world that no longer exists.
Vitrine 3
1–2
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Child Care Activities in Poland: Summer Colonies Initiated and Supported by the American Joint
Distribution Committee
Paris: AJDC, 1935
Collection the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
The design of this report, which incorporates avant-garde photomontage and bold,
streamlined typographic innovations (paragraphs arranged in an hourglass shape), unusual
for a large relief organization at that time, suggests that Vishniac and the JDC shared an
affinity for modern approaches to photography and design. Another JDC report from the
same year, on free-loan kassas in Poland, employed more extensive photomontage layouts,
incorporating several photographs by Vishniac.
3
All Aboard! We’re Sailing for Europe!
New York: AJDC Junior Division, 1939
This pamphlet, featuring several photographs by Vishniac, was produced for a young
American Jewish audience, guiding readers on a tour of Europe, where they would learn
about the experiences and hardships of their “Jewish cousins” overseas.
4
A. Lenkiewicz, [Boys walking down staircase], 1938
Postcard from Roman Vishniac in Warsaw to his daughter Mara in Riga, November 17, 1938
Facsimile
Vishniac sent this postcard to this daughter Mara after visiting Zbaszyn, a Polish border
town where thousands of Jews were living in horrific conditions, following the expulsion of
Polish Jews from Germany: “I just came back from an area where a lot of Jews had it really
bad...There are many unhappy Jews, and among them even girls your age....You, my darling,
have to thank God for the help he is granting to us provisionally and always be kind and
nice, and appreciate this fortune so he will always grant his help.”
5
Report of Herbert J. Seligmann, Director of Public Information, Offices of the Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC) in Paris, October 14, 1937
Seligmann expresses concern that text alone may not be sufficient to communicate to a
gentile audience the severity of conditions faced by eastern European Jews. Citing Vishniac’s
“extraordinary” images “narrating in pictorial form the work of the JDC,” he suggests that
commissioned photographs conveying the terrible reality could be of greater utility in
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persuading the public of the urgency of the organization’s mission, a discussion that
contributed to Vishniac’s commission to create the maquette on view in a case in this room.
6
Henryk Schwartz
[Roman Vishniac holding his Leica camera, Mukacevo], 1937
Vishniac befriended Henryk Schwartz, a cantor and traveling salesman from Mukacevo,
during his numerous visits to the town. Schwartz acted as Vishniac’s guide, helping him gain
access to nearby villages and introducing him to the important rabbis and religious figures in
Mukacevo. Most of Schwartz’s family perished during the Holocaust; he survived and
immigrated to Israel.
7
[Typed label], ca. 1935–38
Gelatin silver print (verso)
8
Free Loan Kassas (Gemelath Chessod) in Poland, Created and Subsidized by the American Joint
Distribution Committee
Paris: AJDC, 1935
This report publicizing the Jewish Free Loan Societies, or kassas, sponsored by the JDC in
Poland, demonstrates the organization’s cutting-edge deployment of avant-garde aesthetics
in promoting its mission. With a bold, streamlined font and minimal text centered on the
page, the report balances short, declarative statements and photomontages that incorporate
Vishniac’s images, as well as the work of other photographers, to boldly illustrate the
economic conditions faced by Poland’s Jews.
A label affixed to the verso of a vintage Vishniac photograph in the JDC archives, depicting
a man waiting for service at a Free Loan Society counter, explains the significance of free
loans in alleviating the economic hardships and the effects of Polish anti-Semitic boycotts.
9
[Roman Vishniac holding his Rolleiflex camera, probably Germany], ca. 1935–38
This portrait was taken around the time that Vishniac traveled to eastern Europe on
assignment for the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).
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10
Aid to Jews Overseas. Report for 1939: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
New York: AJDC, 1939
As World War II approached and the situation of Jews throughout Europe became
intolerable, the JDC’s focus shifted overwhelmingly to emigration, refugee assistance, and
emergency aid. The chart, employing modernist graphics to document JDC expenditures,
illustrates the organization’s rapidly shifting priorities.
Vitrine 4
1
Henrik Uziembło, Hanka, ca. early 1930s
Postcard (verso) from Vishniac in Poland to his daughter Mara in Berlin describing the
interior of an old synagogue, ca. 1935–38
Facsimile
“I am in a very small town and it is quiet here. I arrived very early and already went to the
synagogue at 7:30am. Strangely enough, it is beautifully painted inside with views of holy
places. I took pictures of a 300-year-old lamp and a 200-year-old chair.”
2
Unidentified photographer, [Jewish boys reading], ca. early 1930s
Postcard (verso) from Vishniac in Mukacevo to his daughter Mara in Berlin, November 19,
1937
Facsimile
“Dear sweetheart,
Your father took a lot of pretty pictures in villages, and big and small cities, and he heard and
saw much sadness. Soon the journey will draw to a close.
I traveled the country roads through rain, snow, and mist, through storm and wind, to assign
markings for the next film.
Be happy!
R.”
3
[Interior of the yeshiva of Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz, Mukacevo], ca. 1937–38
Gelatin silver print contact strips from original negatives
4
[Bratislava, Warsaw, Bratislava, Mukacevo, and the Carpathian Mountains], ca. 1935–38
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Vishniac rarely produced contact sheets of his negatives; the few that remain were often
composed of unrelated, individual frames. This rare vintage contact sheet, consisting of five
individual, unrelated Leica negative strips, depicts a wide range of locations and subject
matter, from the remote, snow-covered Carpathian mountain village to the bustling
commercial activity of the Jewish district of Warsaw (only one city, Bratislava, appears on
two strips). It also provides a glimpse of the thousands of negatives in the archive that have
yet to be printed or published.
5
[Eastern Europe], ca. 1935–38
Gelatin silver print contact sheets from original negatives
These vintage contact sheets, each consisting of twelve unrelated Rolleiflex negative frames,
document a variety of locations and subject matter, including basement dwellings on
Krochmalna Street in Warsaw and a TOZ summer camp in Slonim. Marked in red pencil in
Vishniac’s hand to indicate his selections and desired croppings, these contact sheets
demonstrate the development of the photographer’s distinctive style over the course of his
JDC assignment in eastern Europe.
6
Letter from Edward Warburg of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in New
York to Leon Fischer in New York, March 22, 1938
Collection YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York
The 1938 Campaign of the Greater New York Jewish Joint Distribution Committee featured
a cropped version of Vishniac’s iconic image of Sara, a young Jewish girl in a basement
dwelling, on its letterhead (an uncropped print of this image is on view in this room). The
use of the photograph as the “face” of the JDC’s efforts to raise funds for eastern European
Jews that year, while Vishniac was still working on assignment for the organization in eastern
Europe, provides a vivid example of its strategic use of photographs as they were being
commissioned.
7
Public Information Program of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC),
1938
Recognizing Vishniac’s skills as a narrator and lauding the “realistic” nature of his
photography, this report advised the JDC board to commission him to produce films for the
organization. The footage of Carpathian Ruthenia included in this exhibition is the result of
plans outlined here. The report also underscores the value placed on securing publicity in
American magazines and newspapers, suggesting ways in which Vishniac’s photographs, and
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thus the JDC’s mission, could be promoted to the American Jewish and secular national
media.
8
[Woman with pig at a livestock market, Carpathian Ruthenia], 1937
Modern pigment print from color transparency
With the exception of three recently discovered color transparencies, Vishniac’s photographs
of Jewish life in eastern Europe were all shot in black and white. These unique examples of
his experimentation with color likely stem from one of his last trips to eastern Europe.
9
[Textile vendor, Carpathian Ruthenia], 1937
Modern pigment print from color transparency
10
[Eastern Europe], ca. 1935–38
In the late 1980s, Vishniac wrote “Not in Van World” on several dozen contact sheets,
referring to his seminal 1983 publication A Vanished World. Throughout his life, Vishniac’s
intention was to publish most of his eastern European photography in a large, sumptuously
illustrated photography book. These efforts culminated in A Vanished World.
Vitrine 5
Roman Vishniac
A Pictorial Visit to the Jewish Children in Poland, 1938
Commissioned by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) European Executive
Office, Paris
Unpublished photography book maquette
Courtesy the American Jewish Joint Distribution Archives
Touch Screen
A Pictorial Visit to the Jewish Children in Poland, 1938, including 90 pages of photographs and an
essay by Roman Vishniac
Commissioned by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) European Executive
Office, Paris
Digitized and produced for ICP by Ardon Bar Hama, courtesy the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Archives
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This 1938 maquette for an unrealized photography book was commissioned by the JDC to
document its expansive network of summer camps for impoverished Jewish children in
Poland. Vishniac created the maquette, hand-gluing 90 vintage prints into the thick book,
and included an essay with text corresponding to each of the 90 images. (Please use the
touch screen to leaf through the pages of the maquette or to read Vishniac’s essay.)
Vishniac’s photographs and essay celebrate the benefits of rural summer camps subsidized
by the JDC. The book’s purpose, to promote the JDC’s mission to improve the lives of
Jewish children, was accomplished by juxtaposing carefully selected photographs with
impassioned and succinct text. The author makes the “pictorial visit” a journey from the
darkness of urban poverty into the idyllic “paradise on earth” of the JDC’s summer camps:
at the end of a “four weeks’ holiday,” the children of the slums, once “stunted,” fearful,
malnourished, and sickly, are transformed into hopeful, strong, healthy children.
Vishniac sent the maquette to the New York offices of the JDC in late 1938. As war
approached and the needs of European Jews radically changed, the focus of the JDC shifted
away from projects such as summer camps to emigration and refugee relief. The maquette
sat in the JDC archives for more than seventy years. It was digitized this year, and is being
displayed here for the first time.
Vitrine 6
“The Younger Generation of Czechoslovakia’s Jewish Population,” The Forward, Sunday Art
Section featuring six photographs by Roman Vishniac taken in Czechoslovakia, September
25, 1938
Rotogravure
Collection Forward Association, New York
This 1938 rotogravure is the first comprehensive presentation of Vishniac’s work in the
American press, published at the time that he was photographing in eastern Europe. The
Forward, a New York–based Yiddish newspaper, was founded in 1897, the year that Vishniac
was born; by 1938, it had a circulation of nearly 200,000 and was a leading American
metropolitan daily. Rotogravure printing, which had become widespread in the early 1900s,
permitted the quality reproduction of photographs on a mass scale on inexpensive
newsprint; The Forward’s Sunday Art Section was one of many popular Sunday “picture
sections” in newspapers of the era. In this feature, Vishniac’s photographs of religious
Jewish boys with weary, serious expressions were designed to induce sympathy and nostalgia
in readers, most of whom were recent immigrants themselves with family that had remained
in eastern Europe. Although the photographs had been commissioned by the European
headquarters of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), it was the American viewer
who was more likely in a position to make donations and contribute to relief and aid efforts,
the original purpose of the assignment. The pathos of Vishniac’s portraits connected readers
to a world they had left behind, sentimentalizing the “old country” while at the same time
validating the decision to immigrate to America to establish new lives.
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WERKDORP NIEUWESLUIS AGRARIAN TRAINING CAMP
WIERINGERMEER, THE NETHERLANDS, ca. 1938
As the plight of German Jews became increasingly dire throughout the 1930s and many
Jewish families attempted to send their children to safety in neutral countries, many young
German Jews, including Vishniac’s children Wolf and Mara, joined a growing number of
Zionist organizations. With the British government maintaining strict immigration quotas,
hundreds of young German Jews planning to go to Palestine and waiting to obtain visas
were sent to the Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, an agrarian youth training complex, or hachschara, in
the Netherlands. Established in 1934 by the Dutch Foundation for Jewish Labor on land
donated in part by the Dutch government, the Werkdorp taught young, urban Jews farming,
animal husbandry, construction, and other unfamiliar skills they would need in Palestine and
other countries.
Around 1938, Vishniac was sent by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to
document the Werkdorp’s activities. Vishniac photographed the capable young men and
women as idealized, heroic Zionist pioneers, lifting heavy stones, constructing scaffolding,
and tugging on rope. The images bear a striking resemblance to heavily circulated halutz
(Zionist pioneer) photography made in Palestine in the 1930s, and demonstrate Vishniac’s
versatility: here is an ambitious, accomplished series in a style that is radically different from
his earlier work, and perfectly suited to his athletic, industrious subjects. Shot from a low
vantage point, the Werkdorp images juxtapose clear skies and strong silhouettes to form
vigorous, balanced compositions. Young, healthy bodies play off the clean, rhythmic
geometry of the construction sites in a manner that is also reminiscent of the Russian
Constructivist photographer Rodchenko, whose work would certainly have been familiar to
Vishniac.
In March 1941, Nazi SS officers ordered the evacuation of the camp, and most of its
inhabitants were sent to transit camps, including Westerbork. Out of 315 Werkdorp
residents in May 1940, 175 were killed in concentration camps in the east.
[Jewish youth building a school and foundry while learning construction techniques,
Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, the Netherlands], ca. 1938
[Inge Feltenberg, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, the Netherlands], ca. 1938
Inge Feltenberg was born in Berlin in 1916. She survived World War II and immigrated to
Palestine.
[Lothar Leyser, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, the Netherlands], ca. 1938
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Lothar Leyser was born in Essen, Germany, in 1920. He married Alice Brigitta Rechnitz,
also born in 1920, while living at the Werkdorp, where they had two daughters. Leyser, his
wife, and daughters were deported from Amsterdam to Westerbork, a detention and transit
camp in the Netherlands, in June 1943. On July 6, 1943, the family was sent to Sobibor
extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where all four were killed three days later, on
July 9, 1943.
[Ernst Kaufmann, center, and unidentified Jewish youth, wearing clogs while learning
construction techniques in a quarry, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, the
Netherlands], ca. 1938
Ernst Kaufmann was born in Krefeld, Germany, in 1911. He was arrested in June 1941 and
killed in August of that year in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
This photograph is strikingly similar in subject and composition to a bronze relief plaque
made in 1935 by Dutch artist Hildo Krop (1884–1970) for the monument on the Afsluitdijk,
a dam that was completed in 1933 in the north of the Netherlands. The relief depicts three
stoneworkers below the text “A nation that lives builds for the future.” Dutch modernist
architect Willem Dudok (1884–1974) designed the Afsluitdijk and in 1935 Krop’s plaque was
added. The dam was a triumph of Dutch engineering and a source of national pride.
Residents of the Werkdorp probably took Vishniac to the Afsluitdijk; the well-known relief
undoubtedly inspired him to stage this shot, an ideal composition for his heroic image of
Jewish pioneers in the Werkdorp, and an unusual conflation of Dutch nationalist and Zionist
visual sensibilities.
[Willy Lefkowitz and Martin Grünpeter constructing a foundry, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis,
Wieringermeer, the Netherlands], ca. 1938
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Willy Lefkowitz, left, was forcibly removed from the Werkdorp when it was closed by the
Nazis in 1941. Along with the majority of the Werkdorp’s remaining inhabitants, Lefkowitz
was sent to the Westerbork Transit Camp in northeastern Netherlands, a site where Dutch
Jews and Roma were assembled during World War II prior to their deportation to Nazi
extermination camps in the east. Of the 107,000 people who passed through Westerbork—
among them Anne Frank and her family—only 5,200 survived, including Lefkowitz, who
immigrated to the United States. He is believed to have died in Brooklyn in 2001.
Martin Grünpeter, right, a German Jew born in 1914, survived World War II and
immigrated to Palestine.
[Unidentified man and Martin Grünpeter building a foundry and learning construction
techniques, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, the Netherlands], ca. 1938
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
[Lothar Leyser feeding chickens, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, the Netherlands],
ca. 1938
Collection Angela and Robert Reutlinger, Amsterdam
[Jewish youth taking a break from farmwork, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, the
Netherlands], ca. 1938
[Jewish youth transporting hay, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, the Netherlands], ca.
1938
Vishniac toured the Werkdorp in ca. 1938 and was guided through the camp by a young
German Jewish refugee and resident, Julius Werner Reutlinger. Born in Karlsruhe in 1921,
Reutlinger was fifteen when he arrived at the Werkdorp to train in agriculture. When the
camp was raided by Nazis in 1941, Reutlinger managed to escape; he became part of the
resistance and ultimately survived the war. He died in Amsterdam in 1987. The photographs
seen here are among the 27 vintage prints that Vishniac gave to Reutlinger at the end of his
visit to the Werkdorp as a token of gratitude. The 27 prints now belong to Reutlinger’s
children, Angela and Robert, who live in Amsterdam.
[Two girls wearing klederdracht (traditional costumes), Marken, the Netherlands], ca. 1938
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These girls were photographed by Vishniac in Marken, which was then still an island. They
were recently identified as Neeltje Schipper, right, and Jannetje Jansen, left, both born in
1931. Neeltje Schipper is still alive and now lives in the seaside town of Den Helder.
[Crowds gathering at the gates of Whitehall Palace, London], 1939
Vishniac traveled from Holland to France, via England, as a freelance photographer. He
spent several weeks in London creating an extensive body of work organized into categories:
London Types; London Life; Navy and Army; Trafalgar Square; London Port; London
Towers; and Cannons. One often-reproduced image of a man walking across Westminster
Bridge, with Big Ben, the British Houses of Parliament, and the Palace of Westminster in the
background, was featured on the cover of a large calendar, “Forever England,” and became a
popular tourist photo.
Vitrine 7
1
[Werkdorp Nieuwesluis Agrarian Training Camp, Wieringermeer, the Netherlands], ca. 1938
12 gelatin silver contact prints from original negatives
Vishniac’s Werkdorp images did not include any caption information on the few existing
prints of the work, and were thus difficult to identify. A small, 2¼-inch-square contact print
of three young men wearing wooden clogs (bottom right) provided a vital clue that
facilitated the attribution of this larger body of Werkdorp material, with the assistance of
curators at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. This is the only known example of
a professional photographer documenting this Dutch agrarian training camp.
2
De Joden in Nederland (The Jews in the Netherlands), 1941
By Hans Graf von Monts
Book
International Center of Photography; Private collection, New York
After the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Dutch Nazi sympathizers and antiSemites assisted in Nazi propaganda efforts to incite anti-Jewish sentiment among the
populace. This publication, one example of this campaign, co-opted several of Vishniac’s
photographs to serve these ends. Page 30 reads: “Not inclined or capable to do seriously
fruitful work, here he lurks for easy, not very clean business—as a springboard.” Page 31
reads: “The leap to the West has succeeded! The Eastern Jewish barbarian has
become...Dutch! Here he stands, proudly, in his junk shop.”
3
Letters from Vishniac to Luta Vishniac, Camp du Ruchard Internment Camp, France,
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October 2, 7, and 16, 1939
In these letters, Vishniac describes the horrible conditions of his internment in France after
his arrest in September 1939, and also expresses disappointment that the Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC) has not provided the assistance necessary to facilitate his
release.
October 2, 1939: “Mail is distributed every day. We stand in a quad and our lieutenant calls
out the names. Every time I step back disappointedly—no letter, no guarantee of loyalty, no
package. Even though I write every time I’m allowed to…to all the directors of the Joint,
begging them to help me—all in vain.…People who can walk around freely cannot
comprehend the tragedy of sitting behind barbed wire.”
October 7, 1939: “The weather has become so cold and wet that my stomach disorder has
worsened. The ground has softened and the soles of my shoe are broken. Every day, I’m
waiting for a letter from you. I don’t have anything to read except letters.”
October 16, 1939: “There is a whole agricultural Kibbutz of boys up to 17 years here, many
Jews, passengers from the unfortunate St. Louis, people from Dachau and Buchenwald. If I
had a healthy stomach and knew there was peace outside the camp, it would even be
interesting.”
4
Telegram from Roman Vishniac to his family in Stockholm, Camp du Ruchard Internment
Camp, France, October 2, 1939
Throughout his month-long internment, Vishniac made repeated attempts to obtain
documents to facilitate his release. In this telegram, he pleads with his family to intervene,
suggesting offices in Paris and Riga and asking for a Norwegian visa. He also inquires about
the safety of his son Wolf. While working to obtain exit visas to America, Vishniac’s family
was able to pay a ransom for his release from Camp du Ruchard.
5
Letter from Claire Holt, Vishniac’s sister-in-law in Woodstock, New York, to Emma
Woytinsky in Washington, D.C., September 18, 1940
Vishniac’s sister-in-law had immigrated to the US in the 1930s and was living in New York
when he was interned in France. Along with several of Vishniac’s family members and
friends, she wrote numerous letters requesting help in procuring visas for the Vishniac family
from US immigration authorities and the State Department. Her letter also mentions
Vishniac’s assignments for the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and his
pioneering work in photomicroscopy, to verify his professional credentials and employment
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prospects as a photographer. Ultimately, Claire Holt’s support was crucial to the Vishniac
family’s acquisition of American visas.
6
Letter from Morris C. Troper, Chairman of the European Executive Council of the
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in New York, July 16, 1940
This letter of support from the JDC confirmed Vishniac’s employability as a photographer
on the basis of the “special aptitude” he showed in his work for the organization in eastern
Europe.
7
[Mara Vishniac, Västraby, Sweden], February 1940
In May 1939, Mara Vishniac, age thirteen, was sent to a school for German Jewish refugee
youth in Västraby, located in the south of Sweden, where this photograph was taken. In
1940, Mara and Wolf joined Luta at her Stockholm apartment, where they awaited American
visas for the family to immigrate to the US.
8
Mara Vishniac’s Latvian passport, issued 1932
Facsimile
Roman Vishniac obtained Latvian citizenship following his marriage to Luta Bagg in 1920.
This status provided some protection from increasingly restrictive anti-Semitic laws that
deprived German Jews of citizenship. As citizens of another state residing in Germany, the
Vishniacs were still entitled to some rights of which German Jews were deprived. Their
Latvian citizenship also facilitated the Vishniac family’s emigration from Germany to
Sweden in 1939, and their subsequent move to the US in 1940.
9
Letter from Walter Bierer to Mara Vishniac Kohn, July 25, 1990
Shortly before he was interned in 1940, Vishniac had entrusted his negatives to friend Walter
Bierer in Paris. In this letter to Mara Vishniac Kohn, written shortly after Vishniac’s death,
Walter Bierer describes how he managed to transport the photographer’s negatives from
Europe to the United States via Cuba.
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10
[Rolleiflex and Leica negatives], ca. 1920–40
When Walter Bierer offered to courier Vishniac’s negatives to the US, they were cut from
their original film strips into individual frames to facilitate their safe transport.
TRAVEL, REFUGE, AND INTERNMENT IN FRANCE
PARIS, NICE, AND MARSEILLE, CA. 1939
From April to September 1939, Vishniac worked as a freelance photographer based in
France while his family struggled to secure exit visas to the US (his children had been sent to
safety in Sweden). In the interwar years, France had welcomed Jews from across Europe. By
1939, as Jews fleeing Nazi rule brought the Jewish population in France to over 300,000, an
increasingly conservative and nationalist government sought to limit immigration. Detention
camps were established in southern France.
During this time, Vishniac was commissioned by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
(JDC) and the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor (ORT) to photograph and film an
ORT vocational training school for Jewish refugees near Marseille. Vishniac’s parents had
relocated to Nice in 1939, and while visiting them, he took playful, spontaneous
photographs of Riviera beach life, a stark contrast to the intense and machine-focused ORT
images that were to be his final photographic assignment for the JDC until his return to
Europe in 1947.
In late 1939, after entrusting a large selection of his negatives to his friend Walter Bierer in
Paris, Vishniac was arrested and imprisoned at the Camp du Ruchard internment camp.
Held for one month, he wrote desperate letters to family, friends, and the staff of the JDC,
describing the dismal conditions and pleading for assistance. Following his release, secured
through the efforts of his wife, Vishniac waited in France while his family worked to obtain
exit visas, with assistance from the JDC. Vishniac reunited with Luta, Wolf, and Mara in
Lisbon, and the family sailed for America on the S.S. Siboney in December 1940, arriving in
America on New Year’s Eve 1940.
[Maurice Chevalier on the set of Robert Siodmak’s film Pièges, Paris], 1939
The 1939 film Pièges (Personal Column) was directed by German Jewish filmmaker Robert
Siodmak during his long period of exile in France. The atmospheric and suspenseful film
noir production combined the features of a light romantic comedy and a dark crime thriller.
Vishniac’s image of Maurice Chevalier captures the filming of the picture’s final scene, in
which the singer performs “Chansons d’Amour” before a nightclub audience.
[Men cleaning the western portal doors of Notre Dame, Paris], ca. 1936–39
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Notre Dame de Paris, ca. 1936–39
Collection Howard Greenberg
[Bastille Day celebrations, rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, Paris], 1939
[Vishniac’s mother Manya at the dinner table, Nice, France], 1939
[Vishniac’s father Solomon sitting on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice, France], 1939
In 1939, when Vishniac photographed his parents in Nice, 300,000 of the 43 million people
living in France were Jews. Two-thirds of the Jewish population lived in Paris, many of
whom had emigrated from countries across Europe in an effort to escape anti-Semitism. In
1940, after France fell to the invading Germans, the country was divided into a northern and
western zone, directly occupied by the Nazis, and a southern zone controlled by the puppet
Vichy government. Many Jews left Paris, in the northern zone, seeking tenuous refuge in the
south, where Vishniac’s parents began living in hiding in early 1941. Manya Vishniac died in
Nice on July 30, 1941, less than two years after this photograph was taken.
[Beachgoers in the afternoon, Nice, France], ca. 1939
[Sunbather relaxing on wooden chaise longue, Nice, France], ca. 1939
[Men sharing a newspaper on the beach, Nice, France], ca. 1939
[Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor (ORT), Marseille, France], 1939
Digitized from 16mm original footage; running time: 5:31
International Center of Photography, Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In 1939, Vishniac was commissioned to make a promotional film at a Society for Trades and
Agricultural Labor (ORT) vocational training facility near Marseille. The film was never
completed, and only outtakes have survived; it was recently discovered and is being shown
here for the first time. The silent film footage documents male workers as they engage in
fieldwork, learn horticulture, carpentry, glazing, woodworking, construction, and
ironworking, and take classes in engineering, architecture, and mechanics. ORT schools
throughout Europe worked to train and certify Jewish refugees in whichever skills were most
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desired by host countries. When French military mobilization reduced the available
agricultural manpower, ORT refugees provided labor, and also eased the immersion of these
foreign workers into French society.
[Students learning metalwork techniques, Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor (ORT),
Marseille, France], 1939
Founded in Russia in 1880, the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor (ORT) provided
Jews with vocational training and education. By the 1930s, ORT was assisting Jewish
refugees and hopeful émigrés in circumventing visa restrictions by providing training in
fields that were desirable to host countries. In 1933, ORT moved its European headquarters
from Berlin to Paris, just as a large number of German Jewish refugees were migrating to
France after the establishment of the Third Reich. The ORT school in Marseille was in its
infancy when Vishniac was hired to document its efforts on behalf of refugees. Today, ORT
continues its educational mission, with particular focus on Jewish communities in Latin
America, the former USSR, and Israel.
[Architecture student drawing a blueprint with a T-bar, Society for Trades and Agricultural
Labor (ORT), Marseille, France], 1939
[Metalwork student learning welding techniques, Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor
(ORT), Marseille, France], 1939
PICTURES OF JEWISH LIFE IN PREWAR POLAND
JANUARY 1944
YIVO Exhibition 55 West 123 Street
JEWISH LIFE IN THE CARPATHIANS
JANUARY 1945
YIVO Exhibition 55 West 123 Street
In 1944 and 1945, as World War II raged in Europe, Vishniac staged two large exhibitions at
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, presenting his commissioned work from
eastern Europe to an American audience.
Founded in 1925 as the Yiddish Scientific Institute in Wilno, Poland, YIVO was created to
preserve, research, and promote eastern European Jewish culture and history during a period
of rapid modernization and immigration. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the
organization was reestablished in New York in 1940 as the YIVO Institute for Jewish
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Research, at 55 West 123 Street, while a group of brave and dedicated archivists in Wilno
worked to rescue precious material in defiance of Nazi orders.
Vishniac’s first exhibition at YIVO, Pictures of Jewish Life in Prewar Poland, opened in January
1944 and focused on urban Jewish life, with a large selection of images from Lublin,
Warsaw, and Wilno. The second exhibition, Jewish Life in the Carpathians, opened in January
1945, and featured photographs of Jewish farming communities in the Carpathian
Mountains, and yeshivas and religious life in Galicia.
The largely Yiddish-speaking audience in New York viewed images of their communities of
origin just as those communities were being destroyed, a fate the viewers were virtually
powerless to stop. As word of the destruction of eastern European Jews spread across the
Atlantic, Vishniac’s photographs—originally intended to call attention to the privation of
living eastern European Jews—began to be seen as “documents of a lost epoch,” as phrased
in the exhibition text at YIVO. These exhibitions signaled the first major shift in the
contextualization of Vishniac’s work: from documentary assignments to bolster relief efforts
in the late 1930s to images capturing a world on the brink of annihilation.
The YIVO exhibition boards, labeled in both English and Yiddish utilizing an innovative,
Bauhaus-inspired typography that originated in interwar Wilno, are now in the collection of
ICP and are being displayed as a group for the first time since the original exhibitions.
Today, YIVO continues to advance the study of eastern European Jewish cultural heritage,
and houses an archive of more than 24 million artifacts.
The boards from the 1944 exhibition, Pictures of Jewish Life in Prewar Poland, are distinguished
by numbering in black pen on the bottom left. The boards from the 1945 exhibition, Jewish
Life in the Carpathians, are numbered in red at the top center. Although checklists and
installation shots from the original YIVO exhibitions have not been found, we are able to
reconstruct the two distinct groups from the original black and red numbering schema, and
approximate the order in which they were first displayed (only a selection of the boards are
shown here).
The original YIVO boards are highly acidic and fragile, and have thus been overmatted for
display; one unmatted board from each exhibition is displayed in this case. The 1944
exhibition focused on images of city and town life, divided into twelve groups: “Types,”
“Trading in the streets of cities and towns,” “Old quarters in Kracow, Lublin, Slonim, Vilna,
Warsaw,” “Home work,” “Poverty,” “Alleys,” “Transportation,” “In workshop and factory,”
“Kheders and yeshivas,” “Secular schools,” “Children,” and “Synagogues, rabbis and
prayer.” The 1945 exhibition featured images of rural Jewish life, particularly those related to
farming and religious observance. Due to the isolation of Jewish communities in the
Carpathians, most eastern European Jewish immigrants would have been unfamiliar with,
and therefore particularly curious about, the lifestyle portrayed in these photographs.
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Vitrine 8
1
Letter from Roman Vishniac to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 29, 1942
Courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, New York
Vishniac’s 1942 letter to President Roosevelt, written on the occasion of FDR’s sixtieth
birthday, included a gift of five of his photographs of Jewish life in eastern Europe,
presented as records of the effects of oppression to illustrate the “infinite disaster and
injustice” wrought by Nazism. Vishniac hoped to sway Roosevelt to the side of intervention
to prevent the annihilation of European Jewry. The letter illustrates Vishniac’s tenacity and
resourcefulness: even as a recent immigrant who had not yet mastered the language of his
adopted country, he was writing to the president asking for his intercession.
2
Announcement for Vishniac’s exhibition Pictures of Jewish Life in Prewar Poland at the Yiddish
Scientific Institute (YIVO), New York, 1944, text in Yiddish and English
3
Flyer for Vishniac’s exhibition Pictures of Jewish Life in Prewar Poland at the Yiddish Scientific
Institute (YIVO), New York, 1944
4
Page from Vishniac’s scrapbook featuring reproductions of his photograph of David
Eckstein, including a clipping of an announcement for the 1944 exhibition at the Yiddish
Scientific Institute (YIVO), New York (1943–44), scrapbook assembled 1940s–50s
5
The Vanished World
By Raphael Abramovitch
New York: The New York Forward Association, 1947
Books
Private collection, New York; International Center of Photography
In 1947, the Yiddish newspaper The Forward (Forverts) and its publisher, The Forward
Association, issued The Vanished World (Di Farshvundene Velt), a densely illustrated volume on
Jewish life in eastern Europe by the pioneering photographers Alter Kacyzne, Menachem
Kipnis, Vishniac, and others. Edited by Raphael Abramovitch, the photographs were culled
from rotogravure features that had appeared in the Sunday Art Section of The Forward. More
than 550 of these photographs—150 by Vishniac—were reproduced in The Vanished World.
This was the most extensive publication of Vishniac’s images for four decades, until the
seminal (and similarly titled) book A Vanished World (1983). When the Abramovitch book
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was published, the images were already shrouded in loss, made all the more poignant by the
fact that Kacyzne had been murdered in 1941, Kipnis had died of an aneurism in the
Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, and only Vishniac had survived and was able to circulate and
promote his work in the years after the war.
6
The Forward, May 18, 1947, Sunday Art Section featuring an article advertising The New York
Forward Association’s 1947 book The Vanished World
Rotogravure
Collection Forward Association, New York
BERLIN IN RUINS
1947
In 1947, Vishniac returned to Europe as an American citizen, hired by the Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC) and United Jewish Appeal (UJA) to document relief efforts
in Jewish Displaced Persons camps. While on assignment, Vishniac visited Berlin, where he
created a bleak and poignant record of the destroyed city that had been his home for twenty
years. Focusing on West Berlin, he took intimate photographs of his former Wilmersdorf
neighborhood, now reduced to ruins. The same locations that had thrummed with life in his
street photography from the Weimar era are suffused with a haunting silence in his 1947
photographs. One photograph reveals the crumbling and mangled platform that had once
been Vishniac’s living room. Other images capture the tentative steps of a city emerging
from devastation: children walking hand-in-hand and playing amidst the ruins, flowers
growing through the rubble, and hairdressers once more advertising their services. Together,
these pictures, which have not been previously printed or exhibited, constitute a unique and
highly personal contribution to the documentation of postwar life in Berlin.
[Boy standing on a mountain of rubble, Berlin], 1947
[Woman walking past a demolished shoe store with a sign that reads “We take care of your
feet!,” Berlin], 1947
The streets are cleared of the Nazi brownshirts!, Berlin, 1947
[Woman walking dogs along the ruins of the Romanisches Haus, Berlin], 1947
The Romanisches Forum comprised several buildings, including the Romanisches Haus and
Romanisches Café, a famous meeting place for artists and intellectuals in Berlin between the
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world wars that became an early target of Nazi violence. The storefront sign reads Deutsches
Handwerksgut (German craftsmanship).
Ruins of the Grosses Tropenhaus (Large Tropical Greenhouse), Berlin Botanical Garden,
Dahlem, Berlin], 1947
The Grosses Tropenhaus was built in 1905–7 to house large tropical plants, including giant
palm trees. Constructed in steel and glass, the greenhouse was destroyed during World War
II and rebuilt in the 1960s.
[Girls walking arm in arm along a row of ruined buildings in a residential area, Berlin], 1947
[Men walking past the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, corner of
Marburgerstrasse and Tauentzienstrasse; the sign on the post advertises a hair salon for men
and women, Berlin], 1947
ROBERT CAPA
[People on a street lined with ruined buildings and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church,
Berlin], August 1945 (printed 2012)
Inkjet print
International Center of Photography, The Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archive, 2012
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, located near the Vishniac family’s former apartment
building on Pariserstrasse, was severely damaged during an air raid in 1943. Despite the
photograph’s wasteland atmosphere, an advertisement for a hairdresser on the signpost
demonstrates the desire to return to normal life in the aftermath of war’s devastation. Rather
than demolish the church, the city of Berlin maintained its ruins as a monument, creating a
memorial hall in the bell tower. It still stands today, in Berlin’s main shopping district, and is
known as the “Hohler Zahn Kirche” (Hollow Tooth Church).
[Woman walking on crutches through ruins, Berlin], 1947
Vitrine 10
1
Card announcing a change of address and Vishniac’s return to Europe on a postwar
photographic assignment, 1947
2
Roman Vishniac’s American passport, 1947
Roman Vishniac became an American citizen on March 18, 1946, one year before he
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returned to Europe. His passport includes stamps and visa permits allowing him to enter the
American sector of Berlin, and Frankfurt and Munich in the American-occupied sector of
Germany.
3
[Pariserstrasse, Wilmersdorf, Berlin], 1947
[Pariserstrasse, Sächsischestrasse, Wilmersdorf, Berlin], ca. 1936
Vishniac photographed the view from his apartment on Pariserstrasse in Berlin in 1936.
Eleven years later, he documented the ruins of his former neighborhood. The 1947
photograph was taken from the fourth floor of his family’s former apartment building on
Pariserstrasse.
4
[Edith Ernst Vishniac standing in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, corner of
Marburgerstrasse and Tauentzienstrasse, Berlin], 1947
5
Edith Ernst Vishniac
[Roman Vishniac holding the street sign for Tauentzienstrasse, Berlin], 1947
6
Eschen-Studio
[Roman and Edith Vishniac on their wedding day, Berlin], 1947
Vishniac and his first wife Luta divorced in 1946. During his return trip to Europe the
following year, he reconnected with Edith Ernst, who had remained in Berlin during the war.
They were married in Berlin and returned to New York together later that year.
7
[Roman Vishniac’s former home on Pariserstrasse, Wilmersdorf, Berlin], March 1954
8
[Roman Vishniac’s former home on Pariserstrasse, Wilmersdorf, Berlin], 1950
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9
[Roman Vishniac’s former home on Pariserstrasse, Wilmersdorf, Berlin], March 1956
REFUGEES AND DISPLACED PERSONS CAMPS
GERMANY AND FRANCE, 1947
In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied nations had initially expected the repatriation of
displaced refugees to take six months. Most Jewish refugees, however, no longer had
communities or family to which they could return, presenting a unique challenge. Following
the 1945 Harrison Report, the Allies considered Jewish survivors a distinct group, to be
housed in exclusively Jewish camps and aided in eventual emigration. By mid-1947, 250,000
Jews lived in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Officially
administered by the United Nations, the primary aid, support, and administration for the DP
camps came from Jewish charitable organizations, most notably the Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC). In France, Jewish organizations ran DP camps privately,
housing nearly 40,000 refugees. Despite difficult conditions and profound trauma, Jewish life
soon flourished in the camps, as families reunited and formed anew.
Commissioned by the JDC and the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), Vishniac traveled to
various DP camps in 1947, documenting a broad range of relief programs, including food
distribution centers, visa application lines, occupational training, and health services. Other
images record children’s camps, religious and cultural events, and refugee reunions. Wired
back to America, Vishniac’s images helped publicize the plight of homeless and stateless
Jewish refugees, raising funds and increasing the pressure on Britain and the US to open
their doors to survivors.
Spurred by these cultural and educational programs and the emerging Zionist youth
movement, survivors soon rallied against British restrictions on immigration to Palestine.
Following the Declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, and the American Displaced
Persons Act of 1948, most Jews left DP camps for Israel or the United States. By 1952,
almost all DP camps had closed.
[Marseille in ruins, France], 1947
The nineteenth-century basilica Notre-Dame de la Garde, perched above the Old Port on
Marseille’s highest natural point, can be seen in the background. During World War II, the
Old Port had been badly damaged, first by Italian and then German bombing. It was
destroyed in a collaborative effort between the Nazis and the Vichy regime; French police
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expelled 30,000 people from the neighborhood before it was dynamited, and hundreds of
Jews were deported to concentration camps.
[Holocaust survivors gathering outside a building where matzoh is being made in
preparation for the Passover holiday, Hénonville Displaced Persons camp, Picardy, France],
1947
Housed in a 1722 château outside Paris, the Hénonville Displaced Persons camp was
administered by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the Society for Trades and
Agricultural Labor (ORT), and Agudath Israel (the umbrella organization for Orthodox and
ultra-Orthodox Jews), from 1946 to 1952. Hénonville was a homogeneous religious
community of Orthodox Jews that included a relocated Lithuanian yeshiva, a home for
Jewish orphans, and an Orthodox kibbutz, and was directed by a charismatic leader, Rabbi
Solomon Horowitz. Vishniac photographed daily life in the camp, including a series
documenting the preparation of matzoh for the Passover holiday.
[Holocaust survivors making matzoh, Hénonville Displaced Persons camp, Picardy, France],
1947
[Holocaust survivors making matzoh, Hénonville Displaced Persons camp, Picardy, France],
1947
[Holocaust survivor sanding a rolling pin for making matzoh, Hénonville Displaced Persons
camp, Picardy, France], 1947
[Jewish refugees from Germany leaving France for Palestine on board the S.S. Providence,
Marseille Harbor], April 1947
The passenger ship S.S. Providence brought Holocaust survivors from various ports in Europe
to Haifa, Palestine, in 1947–48. Although the majority of ships attempting to bring Jewish
refugees to Palestine were technically illegal and in defiance of strict British immigration
quotas (the ship, Exodus, 1947, is the most famous example), the British did allow a very
limited number of people to legally immigrate, including the passengers of the Providence.
Having arrived at Marseille Harbor from the British sector of occupied Germany, many of
the passengers were survivors from the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp and the
nearby Blankenese children’s home.
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[Jewish refugees from Germany leaving France for Palestine on board the S.S. Providence,
Marseille Harbor], April 1947
[Holocaust survivors and American relief worker, probably Schlachtensee Displaced Persons
camp, Zehlendorf, Berlin], 1947
[Waiting for packages at a Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) distribution counter
and relief station, Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp, Zehlendorf, Berlin], 1947
The Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp housed thousands of Holocaust survivors at any
given time between its establishment in January 1946 and 1948, when it was closed as a
result of the Berlin Blockade. Although Schlachtensee was officially run by the United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the camp was funded and
managed by the JDC and inhabited primarily by survivors from eastern Europe.
Schlachtensee became a vibrant center of both secular and religious Jewish life, and was
home to a Yiddish newspaper, cinema, revue theater, schools for children, a library, sports
clubs, synagogue, and a “people’s university.”
[Jewish refugees singing in front of a portrait of Theodor Herzl, probably the offices of the
US Army Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Mayer Abramowitz, American sector of Berlin], 1947
Rabbi Mayer Abramowitz provided services to more than 100,000 Jewish Displaced Persons
(DPs) living in the American sector of Berlin in 1947, when Vishniac took this photograph.
Many Jewish DPs hoped to immigrate to Palestine, which would soon become the
independent State of Israel, and Hebrew classes were common in the camps, as well as
lessons in Hebrew songs (shown here), literature, and theater. Abramowitz established a
large school at the Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp and held a weekly teacher’s
seminar for Jewish instructors. After returning to the US, Abramowitz became the rabbi of
Temple Menorah in Miami Beach, where he is currently Rabbi Emeritus.
[Refugees crowding outside the registration office of a transit bureau, Schlachtensee
Displaced Persons camp, Zehlendorf, Berlin], 1947
Many of the children wear Jewish star pins and necklaces as they wait in the Schlachtensee
transit bureau offices and courtyards in the American sector of occupied Berlin. By 1952,
more than 136,000 Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) had immigrated to Israel, and over
80,000 to the United States, aided by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the
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United Jewish Appeal (UJA), and other nongovernmental agencies that played an important
role in lobbying for and providing economic, educational, and emigration assistance to DPs.
[Ruth Sternfeld, Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp, Zehlendorf, Berlin], 1947
Ruth Sternfeld was born in Berlin in 1939. Sternfeld was counted as a Mischling (a German
term used by the Third Reich to denote a person who was only partially Aryan), despite the
fact that both of her maternal grandparents were Jewish. Although she was considered a
“Mischling of first degree,” Sternfeld remained in Berlin throughout the war and, despite her
precarious status, managed to survive. Sternfeld was eight years old when Vishniac took this
photograph in the Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp as she prepared to immigrate,
probably to the United States or to Palestine.
Vitrine 11
1
Letter from Meyer F. Steinglass, Director of Publicity, United Jewish Appeal (UJA), New
York, February 25, 1947
This letter certified that Vishniac was sent to Europe, on assignment, to take photographs
for the UJA in connection with a fundraising campaign for the “relief, resettlement and
rehabilitation of Jews in Europe.”
2
Letter from Charles Malamuth, Director of European Public Relations, Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC), Paris, July 8, 1947
This letter, supporting Vishniac’s photography credentials and listing specific equipment he
planned to use on assignment for the JDC, was provided by the organization’s postwar
offices in Paris.
3
[Hénonville Displaced Persons camp, Picardy, France], 1947
4
[Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)–supported Betar summer camp, Munich], 1947
This JDC-supported summer youth camp was organized and administered by the Zionist
youth movement Betar for young Jewish Holocaust survivors and refugees waiting to
immigrate to Palestine
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5
The Year of Survival: 1946 Annual Report, The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
The 1946 JDC annual report, titled The Year of Survival, includes photographs illustrating the
organization’s relief efforts and work on behalf of refugees in Displaced Persons camps, and,
testifies, more broadly, to the “survival” of the global Jewish community after the horrors of
the Holocaust.
6
Memo from Melvin S. Goldstein, Assistant Secretary of the Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee (JDC), Paris, to the JDC offices in New York, April 22, 1947
Vishniac’s assignment for the JDC in Europe was prematurely terminated as a result of the
photographer’s repeated violations of travel and work permit restrictions.
7
Cable from the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), New York, to the JDC offices
in Paris, March 28, 1947
8
[Wannsee Train Station and Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp, Zehlendorf, Berlin],
1947
Gelatin silver print contact sheet from original negatives; contact sheet verso
These contact strips include images of Holocaust survivors and refugees, awaiting reunion
with friends and relatives, arriving at a train station near the Schlachtensee Displaced
Persons camp (left), and the distribution of rations and meals provided by the Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC) (right). On the versos of the DP camp contact sheets,
Vishniac often recorded names, ages, and biographical information for the people he
photographed, noting the fate of their relatives or their parents during the Holocaust,
including, as seen here, deaths in Auschwitz and Theresienstadt or as the result of forced
labor.
9
[Wannsee Train Station and Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp, Zehlendorf, Berlin],
1947
In one frame (top right), a publicity photograph, a young, smiling Jewish refugee, the
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recipient of an JDC food package, stands at a counter where the contents of her package are
displayed for the photographer who would later wire the image to the JDC offices in New
York so that it could be used to generate more donations and aid for the children in DP
Camps.
10
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) uniform pin, 1940s
11
The Year of Destiny: 1948 Annual Report of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
The 1948 JDC annual report, titled The Year of Destiny, includes photographs illustrating the
work of the JDC that impart optimism for the future of European Jewish refugees now that
Palestine has become the nation of Israel and the United States has lifted immigration quotas
on Displaced Persons.
PORTRAIT STUDIO AND NIGHTCLUBS
AMERICA, 1941–EARLY 1950S
Upon arriving in New York at the end of 1940, Vishniac turned to photography to support
his family, opening a portrait studio on the Upper West Side. Always resourceful, he mined
his connections in the Russian and German Jewish expatriate communities to secure famous
subjects for portraits—Marc Chagall, Albert Einstein, and Yiddish theater star Molly Picon
among them. These photographs of well-known artists, intellectuals, and performers helped
establish Vishniac’s reputation in New York, attracting a broad clientele to his studio,
including Jewish émigré dancers, actors, musicians, artists, intellectuals, and scientists. His
success in portraiture ultimately allowed Vishniac to pursue photomicroscopy, biology, and
scientific research—fields that would become his primary focus over the next fifty years.
Vishniac also turned his camera to the city’s nightclubs, where war-weary New Yorkers,
abetted by a swell of immigrant performers and off-duty servicemen, sought distraction at a
frenzied pace. His dynamic and skilled work, focusing on jazz musicians, actors, comedians,
and dancers, exhibited here for the first time, incorporated highbrow and lowbrow, popular
and avant-garde, focusing primarily on three Jewish-owned nightclubs: New York’s first
integrated nightclub, Café Society, the Village Vanguard in bohemian Greenwich Village, and
the burlesque joint Leon & Eddie’s. Much like his earlier work in eastern Europe, Vishniac’s
portraits of Jewish émigré intellectuals and performers capture the vitality and resilience of
Jewish life, this time from the perspective of a different segment of the diaspora, facing its
own set of challenges.
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[Vishniac’s son Wolf arriving with his family in New York Harbor on the S.S. Siboney],
December 31, 1940
Roman Vishniac’s son Wolf was eighteen years old when he arrived in New York Harbor on
the S.S. Siboney, the American Export Lines Steamer that brought the Vishniac family,
including Roman, Luta, Mara, and more than 80 other European Jewish refugees to safety
on American shores. Departing Lisbon on December 20, 1940, the ship arrived on
December 31, 1940. Other passengers on the S.S. Siboney included Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
and Jean Renoir.
[Albert Einstein in his office, Princeton University, New Jersey], 1942
Hoping to establish himself as a portrait photographer by creating a series of images of
famous Russian and German Jewish expatriates, Vishniac contacted Einstein and asked to
take his portrait in 1942. The Nobel Laureate sat for a series of photographs in his Princeton
University office, smoking a pipe, writing at his desk, having his portrait painted, and
working on equations on the blackboard. The portraits, which Einstein later declared among
his favorites, have been widely reproduced and were published as a portfolio in the 1970s.
[Yiddish stage and screen actress Molly Picon, New York], ca. late 1940s
Molly Picon (1898–1992), born on the Lower East Side of New York to Polish Jewish
immigrants, became the most famous Yiddish film and theater performer of all time.
Regarded as the personification of Second Avenue’s “Yiddish Broadway,” she made her
theater debut in 1912 and her film debut in 1921, during the course of a lengthy European
tour that would make her a star in a legendary career that spanned more than seven decades.
[Dancers Emily Frankel and Mark Ryder, New York], early 1950s
Mark Ryder (1921-2006), a pioneer in American modern dance, had been trained and
mentored by Martha Graham. In the early 1950s, when this photograph was taken, he
formed the Dance Drama Duo with his first wife, Emily Frankel (b. 1922); they toured
extensively and premiered cutting-edge work by new and emerging choreographers.
Marc Chagall, New York, 1941
Platinum print
Russian Jewish artist Marc Chagall (1887–1985) lived in France between the two world wars
and, like Vishniac, sought refuge in New York. Unlike Vishniac, Chagall was raised in a
traditional, Yiddish-speaking Jewish household in Vitebsk; his memories of that small city in
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present-day Belarus inspired much of his artwork throughout this life. Chagall arrived in
New York in 1941, the year that Vishniac took his portrait, and quickly became part of the
French and Russian Jewish artistic expatriate circles in the city. In 1941, well-received
exhibitions of Chagall’s paintings were mounted in Chicago and New York, and he began to
enjoy success in the United States.
[Comedian Imogene Coca with trombone, Village Vanguard, Greenwich Village, New York],
early to mid-1940s
Comedian Imogene Coca (1908–2001) was best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on
Your Show of Shows, a popular television variety program in the early 1950s. Coca began her
career as a vaudeville and nightclub performer in the 1930s, and performed at venues
including Café Society, the Blue Angel, and the Village Vanguard, all photographed by
Vishniac. The remarkable elasticity of Coca’s face and the expressiveness of her gestures—
the visible elements of her comedic craft—stand out against the deep shadows and stage
lighting of the smoky nightclub.
Max Gordon, a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, opened the Village Vanguard in 1935 at
Seventh Avenue South and Perry Street in Greenwich Village. Today famous as a jazz club,
in the 1940s the Vanguard hosted poetry, folk music, and left-leaning comedy, which
flourished in the bohemian, comparatively racially integrated atmosphere of Greenwich
Village.
[Comedian Irwin Corey, Village Vanguard, Greenwich Village, New York], early to mid1940s
Comedian and actor Irwin Corey (b. 1914) was born to destitute Jewish parents in Brooklyn,
and was raised in the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Home. At age thirteen, he rode the rails to
California, and later worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Fired from his job as a
union organizer, he started working as a comedian. Once described by Lenny Bruce as “one
of the most brilliant comedians of all time,” Corey is known for his improvisational and
unscripted stand-up, as well as his radical left-wing activism (a member of the Communist
Party, he eventually suffered the blacklist). Vishniac’s photograph centers on the comedic tilt
of Corey’s body, his camera expertly capturing the dynamism of Corey’s performance.
[Guitarist and blues singer Josh White, Café Society, Greenwich Village, New York], 1944
Josh White (1914–1969) became the first African American male star of “all media” in the
1940s, gaining popularity on stage, radio, screen, and recordings as an actor, guitarist, and
folk and blues singer. White was a leading civil rights activist, sang on the first “race record”
played on white radio stations, and was a friend of the Roosevelt family. Vishniac captured
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White at the height of his career, suspended in mid-song, mouth open and fingers
strumming the guitar.
The owner of Café Society, Barney Josephson, was the son of Latvian Jewish immigrants.
He “wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat
together out in front.” At a time when even the Cotton Club in Harlem allowed only a few
African Americans, Café Society welcomed them as patrons and performers. Billie Holiday
sang in the nightclub’s opening show in 1938, and first performed “Strange Fruit” there in
1939, with a backdrop of wall murals by some of the Village’s most celebrated artists.
[Operatic mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, New York], ca. 1943
Russian Jewish opera singer Jennie Tourel (1900–1973) was born Jennie Davidovich in
Vitebsk. She became a star mezzo-soprano in Paris in the 1930s and, following her
immigration to the United States in the early 1940s, starred as Carmen at the Metropolitan
Opera, where she debuted works by Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein, and taught at
Juilliard. Vishniac, fellow Russian Jewish immigrant, photographed Tourel for various press
materials, headshots, and brochures throughout the 1940s.
[Flamenco dancer Maria Louisa Lopez, El Chico nightclub, Greenwich Village, New York],
early to mid-1940s
[Singer Ida James, Café Society, Greenwich Village, New York], 1944
Compared to the other chanteuses of the Café Society, including Sarah Vaughan and Billie
Holliday, Ida James is little remembered today, yet when Vishniac took this portrait of James
she was at the height of her career, famed for her grace, charm, and sugary, high voice. A
popular vocalist on stage, radio, and screen, she recorded a hit duet with Nat King Cole, “Is
You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” and her signature song, “Shoo Shoo Baby,” in 1944.
Four years after Vishniac photographed Ida James, Josh White, and dozens of other AfricanAmerican musicians at the Café Society, the legendary integrated nightclub closed its doors,
one of many victims of the persecution of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
These pictures remain a testament to Barney Josephson’s groundbreaking vision, to the
broader reality of segregation, and to the inestimable contribution of African American
performers to American cultural life in the 1940s.
[Burlesque dancer entertaining servicemen and other patrons while balancing a glass on her
head, Leon & Eddie’s Nightclub, 52nd Street, New York], 1945
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[Burlesque star Sherry Britton, Leon & Eddie’s Nightclub, 52nd Street, New York], 1945
Showgirl Sherry Britton (1918–2008), the star of Leon & Eddie’s famed burlesque show, was
born Edith Zack to a poor Jewish family in New Jersey. Celebrated for her elegant and prim
performances, she peeled off evening gowns to Tchaikovsky in her most popular routine.
Although only a little over five feet, the low vantage point of this shot makes her appear
statuesque and imposing.
In the late 1940s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia implemented increasingly severe restrictions on
burlesque shows in New York; as a result, Leon & Eddie’s closed in 1953. Sherry Britton,
the subject of a well-known 1953 photograph by Weegee, later established a career in
“legitimate” theater and television, ultimately graduating summa cum laude from Fordham
Law School in the early 1980s.
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Page from Vishniac’s scrapbook containing reproductions of his brochures and portraits of
several European Jewish émigrés in New York, including violinists Tossy Spiyakovsky and
Bronislaw Huberman, and physicist Albert Einstein, scrapbook assembled 1940s–50s
2
[Marc Chagall, New York], 1941
Gelatin silver print contact prints from original negatives
3
Program for annual gala dinner in honor of Albert Einstein hosted by Children to Palestine,
Inc. Greater New York Committee, March 31, 1952, signed by Albert Einstein
Vishniac’s portrait series of Einstein, including the photograph reproduced on the cover of
this brochure and the print on the wall above, was made in Einstein’s Princeton University
offices in 1942. Einstein signed the brochure for Vishniac along with several other prints
from the 1942 sitting.
4
Roman Vishniac, Photographic Portraits, 1945–47
Gelatin silver print business card
5
[Roman Vishniac working in his studio under a leaky ceiling, Upper West Side, New York],
1950s
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6
[Roman Vishniac in his portrait studio, Upper West Side, New York], ca. 1940s
7
[Roman Vishniac’s New Year’s card], 1948
IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES
NEW YORK, 1941–EARLY 1950S
Throughout the 1940s, Vishniac documented the recent arrival of Jewish refugees and
Holocaust survivors, working as a freelance photographer for groups like the Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), National Refugee Service (NRS), and HICEM (a coalition of
several Jewish aid organizations). Vishniac documented recent immigrants’ efforts to
establish new lives in America, mirroring his own experiences at that time. Focusing on the
essential work of Jewish social service organizations in providing education, housing, and
other assistance, his images were reproduced in contemporary newspaper articles, annual
reports, and brochures in an effort to raise funds and awareness.
During this period, Vishniac extensively photographed many of New York’s Jewish
hospitals, where large numbers of young, female Jewish refugees worked as nurses. Many
had come from Displaced Persons camps, where they provided health services and
education to fellow refugees, and were able to find careers within the network of hospitals
and nursing schools funded by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York (FJP).
Vishniac’s photographs helped institutions like Beth Israel School of Nursing, Montefiore
Hospital, Jewish Hospital School of Nursing, and the Hospital for Joint Diseases document
the increasing prominence of nurses and publicize the new programs created to train them.
A small portion of this body of work is exhibited here for the first time.
[Jewish refugee from Europe arriving on a children’s transport under the sponsorship of the
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization, City College of New
York, West Harlem, New York], ca. 1941
During World War II, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker
organization active in relief work, shared a building in New York with the National Refugee
Service (NRS), and the two organizations collaborated in efforts to rescue and assist Jewish
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refugees. In 1941 and 1942, the AFSC rescued Jewish children in refugee camps and homes
in southern France, transporting them to safety on American shores via Portugal (the same
journey taken by Vishniac and his family). Having left her parents behind in Europe, this
child was photographed shortly after she arrived in New York.
[Sisters Marion, Renate, and Karen Gumprecht, refugees assisted by the National Refugee
Service (NRS) and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), shortly after their arrival in the
United States, Central Park, New York], 1941
The Gumprecht sisters were born in Hamburg, Germany, and arrived in New York on
September 12, 1941, on the Spanish freighter S.S. Navemar. Designed to carry fifteen
passengers, the ship was crammed with more than 1,100 refugees when it left Europe on a
harrowing thirty-eight-day voyage, and many contracted typhus during the journey. Werner
Gumprecht, the girls’ father, later recalled that the “Navemar was not the paradise we were
looking for when we got our tickets. It really was hell—but it saved our lives.” Shortly after
their arrival, Vishniac took this uncanny photograph of the sisters in Central Park.
[Physical therapist and masseuse Hanna Stern Weinberger, Jewish Hospital for Joint
Diseases, East Harlem, New York], ca. 1948–51
Hanna Stern Weinberger was born in Neisse, Germany, in 1924. She was deported to
Auschwitz in 1943, where she endured forced labor in a German munitions plant. While
shackled to two other female prisoners during a forced march to another camp, she and the
other women managed to escape. After the war ended, she lived in a Displaced Persons
camp for several years, and then immigrated to the US. Seeking a profession that did not
require an American high school diploma, Weinberger became a registered physical therapist
and masseuse. From 1948 to 1951, she worked at the Jewish Hospital for Joint Diseases. In
the 1950s, shortly after Vishniac took this photograph, Weinberger had the tattoo from
Auschwitz removed.
Weinberger was recently identified through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
(USHMM) Survivors Registry, where she had submitted a prewar photograph and
information about her family history, which can be seen in the case below.
[First-year student nurses, including several Holocaust survivors, in a classroom, Beth Israel
School of Nursing, Lower East Side, New York], ca. 1949
Beth Israel Hospital, a charter member of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies (FJP), was
founded in 1890 on the Lower East Side. In the late 1940s, Vishniac was commissioned by
the FJP to document the work and achievements of various Jewish hospitals. Many of the
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Jewish nurses he photographed were Holocaust survivors and refugees, recent immigrants
working to establish new lives in New York.
Ruth Weiss-Merdinger (bottom row, second from left) was born in Poland in 1927 to a
prosperous family; her physician father was later the chief doctor of a Jewish ghetto, and her
mother was a nurse in the ghetto and later at Auschwitz. Weiss-Merdinger survived the
Holocaust and immigrated to the US in 1947. She enrolled at the Beth Israel School of
Nursing in 1948, funded by a scholarship from the National Council of Jewish Women, and
went on to become a nursing instructor.
[Student nurses practicing their skills by giving each other injections, Jewish Hospital School
of Nursing, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York], late 1940s–early 1950s
An increased demand for nurses during World War II, and the establishment of the CadetNursing Corps in 1943, contributed to public recognition of nursing as a profession and an
expansion of nurses’ duties. The prestigious and rigorous Jewish nursing schools
photographed by Vishniac during the late 1940s and early 1950s reflect the increased
responsibility accorded to the profession in the postwar period—making it an attractive
profession for many female Holocaust survivors and refugees, recent immigrants working to
establish new lives in New York. Vishniac documented the monumental changes to the
profession at institutions like the Jewish Hospital School of Nursing in Brooklyn and Beth
Israel Hospital’s Jewish nursing school in Manhattan.
[Physicians removing a young patient’s body cast, Jewish Hospital for Joint Diseases, East
Harlem, New York], late 1940s–early 1950s
The Jewish Hospital for Joint Diseases was founded in 1905 with a mission to “bring
relief…to the orthopedic problems of children,” including polio. In 1917, the hospital
became a charter member of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies (FJP), and by the
1940s, when Vishniac worked as a freelance photographer for various Jewish hospitals in
New York, was producing illustrated brochures and annual reports of the work they were
doing as part of their fundraising efforts.
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1
Refugees...1942: The Annual Report of the National Refugee Service
New York: The National Refugee Service, 1943
Several photographs by Vishniac of Jewish refugee children, taken shortly after their arrival
in New York, were reproduced in this and other National Refugee Service (NRS) annual
reports.
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2
Page from Vishniac’s scrapbook featuring his photograph of the Gumprecht family on the
cover of Refugees...1942: The Annual Report of the National Refugee Service, scrapbook assembled
1940s–50s
Sisters Renate, Karen, and Marion Gumprecht, with their parents Edith and Werner, were
photographed shortly after their arrival in the United States. Vishniac’s photographs of the
Gumprecht family and other Jewish refugee passengers on the S.S. Navemar were reproduced
in newspapers, magazines, and NRS annual reports.
3
Page of Vishniac’s scrapbook featuring “They Came on the Navemar,” with photographs by
Vishniac from a report printed by the National Refugee Service (ca. 1941–42), scrapbook
assembled 1940s–50s
4
[Sisters Ruth, Elfriede, and Hanna Stern, Neisse], 1937
Facsimile
Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hanna Stern Weinberger Family
Collection
Sisters Ruth, Elfriede, and Hanna Stern were born in Neisse, Germany. Ruth (b. 1919)
survived the war by escaping to England in 1939. Elfriede (b. 1916) was killed in Riga in
1942. Hanna (b. 1924) survived Auschwitz and moved to the United States after the war.
5
Hanna Stern’s American Expeditionary Forces Displaced Persons (AEF DP) registration
card, January 11, 1945
Courtesy International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen
6
Page from Vishniac’s scrapbook containing a National Refugee Services (NRS)
advertisement with photographs by Vishniac featuring Jewish refugees in the US Army and
trained by the NRS as technicians (early to mid-1940s) scrapbook assembled 1940s–50s
“THE FACE OF AMERICA AT WAR”
NEW YORK, 1941–44
The recent discovery of Vishniac’s unsuccessful 1944 application for a Guggenheim
Fellowship sheds new light on a group of more than 200 negatives from the early 1940s that
had previously appeared to be unrelated. Printed and exhibited here for the first time, these
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images show the impact of war rationing on shoppers at the Washington Market, the war
relief efforts of New York’s Chinese American community, women’s entrance into the
industrial workforce and the military, the carousing of off-duty soldiers in Central Park, and
the impact of war on the lives of New Yorkers. Vishniac’s Guggenheim proposal described a
“photographic series portraying the face of America at war,” and this diverse yet cohesive
group of images was likely submitted as a sample portfolio with his application, the
beginnings of a project never completed for want of funding. His extraordinary, extensive
series on Chinatown, reminiscent of his photographs of urban Jewish communities in
eastern Europe, depicts a neighborhood that is both separated from and integrated into the
fabric of the larger city, reflective of Vishniac’s own efforts to navigate yet another new,
adopted home as an outsider. The images capture the “objectivity” of “un-posed”
journalistic photography, in the words of one recommender, and have a great deal in
common with fellow Jewish émigré Robert Frank’s Guggenheim-funded project, The
Americans, made a decade later.
[Customers waiting in line at a butcher’s counter during wartime rationing, Washington
Market, New York], 1941–44
Washington Market was famed for its exceptional variety and quantity of food. Vishniac
documented the mostly female customers waiting for service during a period of wartime
restrictions and food rationing. Through careful framing—customers stand against bare
counters and voided display cases—he captured disenchanted expressions that can be read
as a projection of Vishniac’s own experience as a new immigrant in America, as well as a
record of comparative privation in the former plenty of Washington Market.
[Customers waiting for service at a butcher’s counter during wartime rationing. The sign
reads “No hams, No bacon, No pork, No lamb,” Washington Market, New York], 1941–44
[Sailors watching rowboats in Central Park, New York], 1942–44
[Donating blood to the New York Chinese Blood Bank, Chinatown, New York], 1943–44
The New York Chinese Blood Bank was established in July 1943, to aid American and
Chinese war efforts to combat the Japanese occupation of China. From July 1943 to January
1944, the blood bank collected blood for 1,757 soldiers.
[Mourners walking in the funeral procession of a Chinese American Navy sailor, Mott Street,
Chinatown, New York], 1943–44
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Out of roughly 110,000 Chinese Americans living in the United States in 1941, more than
13,000 served in the American armed forces.
[Students taking notes in a Chinese language class, offices of the American Women’s
Volunteer Service–Chinese Women’s New Life Movement, Chinatown, New York], 1943–
44
The Chinese Women’s New Life Movement was founded in 1934 by the government of
Chiang Kai-shek, incorporating Confucian philosophy and anti-communism. China fought
alongside the United States against Japan during World War II, and many Chinese refugees
and representatives of the Nationalist government settled in New York, contributing to relief
and fundraising efforts for American and Chinese troops. The Chinese Women’s New Life
Movement promoted war relief activities in New York, in conjunction with the American
Women’s Voluntary Services, the country’s largest American women’s service organization.
[Factory worker cutting and grinding glass, Hoffman MF & Co., New York], 1942–44
[Student auto mechanics learning to repair a car engine, New York], 1942–44
Millions of American men served in the army during World War II, resulting in the
unprecedented participation of American women in a wide range of trades and occupations
previously closed to them, including jobs in manufacturing, heavy industry, engineering, and
transportation that were often critical to the war effort. Images of American women shown
working in fields traditionally associated with men were widely circulated by government
agencies and advertising companies. These images, including the iconic depiction of “Rosie
the Riveter,” exulted the glamorous, virtuous, and patriotic work of wartime women.
Vishniac’s documentation of these workers, never before printed or published, was included
in his series “The Face of America at War.”
JEWISH COMMUNITY LIFE
NEW YORK, 1941–EARLY 1950S
While struggling to establish himself as a scientist in the US, Vishniac accepted assignments
from numerous Jewish communal, educational, and social service organizations. He was
particularly skilled at photographing children, a fact evident in both his earlier images of
1930s eastern Europe and his later work in America, which often focused on the experiences
and lives of children and young adults—most of whom were immigrants like himself and his
own children. Like his pictures of Jewish medical institutions and immigrants, these
photographs were often commissioned by Jewish philanthropic organizations, including the
Jewish Education Committee, formed in 1939, documenting a wide range of religious and
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secular Jewish schools and camps in the years leading up to, and just after, the establishment
of the State of Israel in 1948. Taken during and shortly after the devastation of the
Holocaust, Vishniac’s photographs of thriving immigrant community centers such as the
Educational Alliance, the Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, and the Bronx House
capture a critical period in American Jewish history when the center of Jewish organizational
and communal life had shifted, suddenly and traumatically, from Europe to America.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, children represented the promising future of Jewish life in
America, taking on profound symbolic significance in the 1940s. Portrayed as well-dressed,
nourished, and energetic, the children inhabiting these images contrast starkly with
Vishniac’s pictures of eastern European children suffering the crippling effects of poverty.
His pictures of healthy, thriving children, engaged in activities promoting and sustaining
their American Jewish identity, reassured viewers of a bright future for Jews in America.
[Boys exercising in the gymnasium of the Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst,
Brooklyn, New York], ca. 1949
The Jewish Community of Bensonhurst, known as the “J,” was established in 1927 to serve
the growing population of first-generation American Jews migrating to South Brooklyn. The
J’s mission, to “ennoble Jewish youth” by building and fostering a sense of Jewish
community, was accomplished through the promotion of arts and recreation for all ages.
American Jewish major league baseball legend Sandy Koufax, a regular at the J, had started
his sports career there as a basketball player.
In a dramatic departure from his iconic photographs of impoverished children in prewar
eastern Europe, here Vishniac focused on the strong, healthy young American children. The
children’s vitality is reinforced by the diagonal lines and geometric angles of the ropes,
contributing to a forceful and innovative composition reflective of Vishniac’s previously
unknown American work from the 1940s.
[Refugee children, brought to New York by the US Committee for the Care of European
Children (USCOM) on the S.S. Serpa Pinto, salute the American flag, Jewish children’s home,
New York], 1942
These Jewish refugee children arrived in the US under the auspices of the US Committee for
the Care of European Children (USCOM) on the S.S. Serpa Pinto, a Portuguese liner used by
multiple Jewish organizations to transport refugees from Lisbon to New York. USCOM
evacuated Jewish refugee children from western Europe, despite strong congressional
opposition. Vishniac photographed the children saluting the American flag outside a Jewish
children’s home. Throughout the 1940s, American Jewish social service organizations
provided assistance to recent immigrants. Some, including New York’s Educational Alliance,
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incorporated flag waving and saluting exercises as a component of their Americanization and
education efforts, which later became controversial.
[Student raising her hand in Hebrew school, Bronx House, Washington Avenue, Bronx],
early to mid-1940s
The Bronx House was established in 1911 to serve the large number of first-generation
Jewish-Americans who had moved to the Bronx to escape the crowded conditions of
Manhattan tenements. A Jewish settlement house in what was then New York’s most heavily
Jewish borough, its goal was to improve the quality of residents’ lives by offering arts,
education, and recreation activities within the context of Jewish communal values. In the
1920s, the programming of the Bronx House reflected the radical nature of many Jewish
residents, teaching consumer education and establishing retail cooperatives, hosting union
meetings, offering night classes in Yiddish, and featuring many left-wing Yiddish speakers in
its lecture series. In the 1930s and 1940s, when this photograph was taken, it operated as a
Jewish Community Center. The classroom seen here is decorated with posters supporting
immigration and aid to Palestine. Vishniac’s photographs of the Bronx House were probably
commissioned by the Jewish Educational Committee (a photograph by Vishniac at the same
site appears in one of their pamphlets).
[Campers and camp counselor, Surprise Lake Camp, Cold Spring, New York], 1940s
Surprise Lake Camp was established in 1902 by the Educational Alliance to provide
underprivileged Jewish boys from New York City’s Lower East Side tenements with summer
vacations in rural Cold Spring. The camp operated summer and winter programs, offering
enriching experiences that integrated religious, recreational, and artistic growth and
providing nutritious meals and medical/dental services, regardless of families’ ability to pay.
The oldest Jewish resident camp in the United States, Surprise Lake Camp recently
celebrated its 110th anniversary and continues to serve Jewish boys and girls from the New
York metropolitan area, providing generous scholarships; Eddie Cantor, Jerry Stiller, and
Neil Diamond are among its famous alumni.
[Cookie the Chimpanzee with boy on a tricycle, Bronx Zoo, New York], 1943
Cookie, a young chimpanzee in the Bronx Zoo, was a popular photographic subject in the
early 1940s. After receiving a box camera loaded with film, Cookie became a celebrated
amateur photographer in her own right, whose images were reproduced in various
magazines and journals. Vishniac’s fascination with and appreciation for animals, and his
passion for photographing them, can be seen in hundreds of unprinted negatives from early
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1920s Europe to late 1960s America. The Vishniac family even had a pet monkey, Jackie, in
their Berlin apartment.
[Garment district executives eating and reading Yiddish newspapers, Hirsch’s Kosher
Delicatessen Restaurant, West 35th Street, New York], early 1940s
Between 1880 and 1920, more than 2 million Yiddish-speaking Jews from eastern Europe
came to New York. Living in close quarters on the Lower East Side, they invented a new
kind of eating establishment based on German delicatessens, but which offered foods from
across their former homelands. By the early 1900s, Jewish delicatessens had spread across
the city, and could soon be found in many major American cities with large Jewish
populations, often springing up around the garment districts where Jewish immigrants
worked and ran the clothing trade. New York’s immigrant Jews essentially invented kosher
delicatessens (nothing like them had existed in eastern Europe), contributing to and fostering
a sense of community and Jewish American identity throughout the twentieth century.
VISHNIAC’S SCRAPBOOK
Roman Vishniac was acutely aware of how historical developments affected the perception
of his work. During the 1940s and 1950s, he assembled a scrapbook documenting the
evolving appearance of his photography in print, examples of which are shown here. The
clippings demonstrate the various ways in which the meaning and use of his images changed
along with the fate of the eastern European Jews he had documented. Vishniac’s JDCcommissioned photographs from the mid- to late 1930s figured in multiple narratives during
World War II: the increasingly calamitous situation of eastern European Jews and their need
for international support and relief; their deplorable fate in the ghettos and camps after the
Nazi invasion; the desperate necessity of children’s immigration to Palestine, England, or the
US; and the need for political and military intervention. But as the fate of European Jews
became increasingly dire in the 1940s, philanthropic organizations including the United
Jewish Appeal (UJA) and the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) adjusted the focus
of their relief efforts accordingly. Vishniac’s 1942 letter to President Roosevelt testifies to the
shift in the way his photographs were both employed and received; by the early 1940s,
images that only four years before had been used to argue for intervention, now came to
represent the final photographic record of a world on the brink of annihilation.
At the same time, the publication of Vishniac’s photographs promoting the activities of the
National Refugee Service (NRS) reflected yet another narrative: Holocaust refugees leaving
behind a devastated Europe for a bright future in America. These images provided a vital
counterpoint to the horrific devastation of the war, and the scrapbook underscores how
Vishniac’s situation—as a European Jewish immigrant in America—came to mirror that of
his subjects.
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1
Roman Vishniac
Introduction by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Polish Jews: A Pictorial Record
New York: Schocken Books, 1947
Book
Vishniac’s first monograph included an elegiac introduction by rabbi and philosopher
Abraham Joshua Heschel, adapted from a lecture given by him in 1945 at the Jewish
Theological Seminary, and featured 31 photographs of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before
World War II.
2
The Family of Man
New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955
Book
Edward Steichen’s critically acclaimed 1955 exhibition and catalog The Family of Man included
three photographs by Vishniac, whose work was featured alongside the leading
photographers of the twentieth century. The show opened at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York and traveled internationally for nearly a decade.
This page juxtaposes nine portraits, including one by Vishniac of a woman looking for work
in Warsaw, ca. 1935–38, with a quote by Bertrand Russell about the apocalyptic dangers of
atomic bombs.
In July 1955, Vishniac was featured in a two-part New Yorker profile, “The Tiny Landscape,”
which introduced his work as a scientist and photographer to American audiences. Portrait
cartoons by New Yorker artist Abe Birnbaum appeared on the introductory page of both
installments (below).
3
Rolf Petersen
[Installation view of The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art, New York], 1955
Ink-jet exhibition print from digital scan
Courtesy The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Vishniac’s photograph of a young girl in a black cap can be seen top row, center right.
4
The Concerned Photographer 2
New York: Grossman Publishers in cooperation with the International Fund for Concerned
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Photography, 1972
Book
Cornell Capa included Vishniac in the group exhibition and publication Concerned Photographer
2. The term “concerned photographer,” coined by Capa, referred to politically and socially
inclined photographers who approached their work with a moral obligation to use the
camera with a social conscience.
5
Roman Vishniac
By Eugene Kinkead and Roman Vishniac
From the ICP Library of Photographers Series, produced by the International Fund for
Concerned Photography
New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974
Book
In 1974, the International Fund for Concerned Photography, ICP’s predecessor, published a
slim monograph on Vishniac that included his scientific photomicroscopy and photographs
of prewar eastern Europe. The text, by Eugene Kinkead, was reprinted from the 1955 New
Yorker article.
6
[Elie Wiesel], 1970s–early 1980s
Gelatin silver print contact strips from original negatives
Vishniac’s friend, author, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, wrote the forward to the
photographer’s seminal publication A Vanished World, observing that “this astonishing man’s
eyes seem to pierce our memory, to sift its shadows...a supreme witness, Vishniac evokes
with sorrow and with love this picturesque world he has seen engulfed by fire and darkness.”
7
A Vanished World
By Roman Vishniac, with a foreword by Elie Wiesel
New York: Farrar, Straus & Girous, 1983
Book
In 1983, a selection of 180 photographs by Vishniac of Jewish life in eastern Europe was
published to international acclaim. It is one of—if not the—most popular photography
books in Jewish homes and received the National Jewish Book Award.
8
Arnold Newman
Roman Vishniac, 1978
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Internal dye diffusion transfer, Polaroid Polacolor ER
9
[Mara Vishniac, Roman Vishniac, and Cornell Capa, Aspen, Colorado], early 1970s
10
[Roman and Edith Vishniac with Cornell Capa (standing) responding to questions at The
Concerned Photographer 2 exhibition, International Center of Photography, 1130 Fifth Avenue,
New York], 1973
11
[Cornell Capa and Roman Vishniac, probably Aspen, Colorado], early 1970s
SCIENTIFIC WORK: PHOTOMICROSCOPY
AMERICA, EARLY 1950S–LATE 1970S
Nature has explained to me many things that books alone could not give me. Science and nature have given
me the most interesting hours of my life. —Roman Vishniac
From his earliest years as a biology and zoology student in Moscow, Vishniac pursued his
lifelong passion for photomicroscopy. His innovative use of polarized light and high
magnification allowed him to capture unique images of the microscopic world. By the mid1950s, Vishniac had established himself as a pioneer in the field and was regularly
commissioned by government agencies, scientists, and institutions to document and research
microorganisms and biological phenomena. A major profile on Vishniac in the New Yorker in
1955 celebrated both his groundbreaking scientific photography and his earlier eastern
European photographs.
Vishniac also achieved renown as an accomplished cinemicroscopist, creating numerous
scientific films now housed in the collection of the University of South Carolina. A
generation of students learned biology from these films. Vishniac’s color photography
appeared in hundreds of magazine and journal articles and on dozens of covers, including
Life, OMNI, Nature, and Science, and his research provided vital visual resources to worldrenowned scientists. In 1961 he became a professor and taught biology and art education for
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the next two decades; scientific research, teaching, and photomicroscopy would remain the
focus of Vishniac’s work in America until his death in 1990.
In the final days of his life, as his health rapidly declined, Vishniac was visited by his son-inlaw, the physicist and Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn, who showed him prints made by one of
his colleagues using a scanning electron microscope depicting individual atoms lying on
metallic surfaces. Vishniac, weak and exhausted, leaned forward slightly and asked, “What
magnification?” When told “about ten million fold,” he slumped back into the bed,
declaring, “Then they have beaten me.”
This slide show of more than 90 color and black-and-white science transparencies from the
early 1950s to the late 1970s—many digitized for the first time—includes Vishniac’s original
captions wherever available. The original slides and science prints are now in the collection
of the International Center of Photography.
FRITZ GORO
[Roman Vishniac, New York], 1951
This photograph was published in a Life feature article on Vishniac and his color
photomicroscopy work, with the caption: “Roman Vishniac, surrounded by green frogs,
newts and slime molds used in ‘colorization’ studies, dissects dead cockroach so he can
observe ‘colorized’ light effect of insecticide on nerve tissue.”
Vitrine 14
1
[Roman Vishniac’s microscope, Germany], ca. 1923
International Center of Photography, Gift of James Howard Fraser, 2011
A modified Ernst Leitz Wetzlar microscope No. 221651, made in Germany. The stand is
dated later. Vishniac’s collection of 6X and 8X eye pieces, 4mm, 7mm, 8mm, and 16mm
lenses, various cases, a loupe, and a reflector are also displayed.
2
Dr. Roman Vishniac, Research Through Photography, ca. 1950s–60s
Business card
3
Dr. Roman Vishniac, Research in Microbiology, Cinemicroscopy 16, ca. 1947–1960s
Business card
4
Dr. Roman Vishniac, scientific photography and color photomicrography, 1945–47
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Business card
5
Roman Vishniac’s change of address card, ca. 1950s–60s
Vitrine 15
1
Refugees...1943: The Annual Report of the National Refugee Service. A Decade of Refugee Aid in
America, featuring a photograph by Vishniac on the cover
New York: National Refugee Service, 1944
2
Michael Spiegel’s bar mitzvah invitation, 1948
International Center of Photography, Gift of Miriam Victory Spiegel, 2012
[Bar mitzvah of Michael Spiegel, Forest Hills, Queens], June 12, 1948
4 gelatin silver prints
[Michael Spiegel and Vishniac’s wife, Edith, on the terrace with the Israeli flag one month
after the declaration of the state of Israel, Spiegel family home, Forest Hills, Queens], June
12, 1948
The recent discovery of a two-volume bar mitzvah album, made in 1948 by Vishniac,
indicates that in addition to his freelance work for various Jewish community and relief
organizations in the 1940s, he photographed private Jewish events, such as the bar mitzvah
of Michael Spiegel in Forest Hills, Queens.
Sonia and Sigmund Spiegel emigrated from Vienna to New York, via Havana, in December
1940 with their son Michael. They lived first in Manhattan, where their daughter Miriam was
born, then moved to Forest Hills, Queens, in 1946. Michael Spiegel’s bar mitzvah service
took place at Forest Hills Jewish Center, a conservative synagogue in Queens, followed by a
party in the family home nearby. All 48 prints in the two albums were printed, arranged,
mounted and signed by Vishniac. In 2012 Miriam Victory Spiegel donated the albums to
ICP.
3
Roman Vishniac’s English lesson and composition notebook, ca. 1944–46
Vishniac was fluent in Russian, German, and French when he arrived in the United States,
although he knew very little English. This composition notebook was used to study the
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English language and the history, traditions, and government of the United States, probably
in preparation for his 1946 citizenship exam. The composition book includes the words for
the Pledge of Allegiance, the song “God Bless America,” grammar, conjugation, and
vocabulary lessons, information about the branches of government, and short essays about
the benefits of living in America.
4
1949 Activities Conducted by the Educational Alliance, New York, with markings in Vishniac’s
hand
New York: Educational Alliance, 1949
The Educational Alliance was founded by progressive German Jewish philanthropists in
1889 to aid the Lower East Side’s large population of eastern European Jewish immigrants
through classes and programs that emphasized American citizenship, literacy, professional
and vocational skills, the arts, and physical education. Vishniac worked as a freelance
photographer for the Education Alliance throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s.
5
[Teenagers singing Passover songs at a community seder, Educational Alliance, Lower East
Side, New York], 1949

More than any other photographer, Roman Vishniac`s images have

Transcription

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