Customer Reviews

A Vanished World

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One look at the pages of this wrenching book will tell the story. Roman Vishniac, secretly, in some cases, shot thousands of pictures of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, shortly before they were swallowed up by the Holocaust.

Young, old, in-between are shown going about their ordinary lives, some already paying the price of the prevalent Eastern European anti-Semitism, virtually oblivious to what was coming their way.

You can't look at these pictures and not shudder: certainly no one in these pictures can still be alive, and it's not just because of the passage of time. Most of the people photographed here lived in the smaller villages, segregated in many cases from the Gentiles, wearing clothes that quickly and easily identified them to their destroyers.

Vishniac shot an estimated 16,000 pictures, but managed to get only about 2,000 out when he fled to the United States in 1940. We should be grateful for what he's given us, and mourn all that was lost.

Open this book and you will enter a world of the vanished, but not vanquished. Roman Vishniac's stunning black and white photographs of the destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe will surely enter your heart, as they have mine. The simple, sometimes stark compositions are primarily of the faces of Jews long lost in the flames of the Holocaust. Most of the photographs have a brief explanatory comment that gives them context. Vishniac takes us into the tiny basement apartments of Warsaw's Jewish porters, the logging villages of Carpathian Ruthenia, and the narrow streets of Vilna. I found myself drawn into that world where Jews worked, studied, walked on their way to and from synagogues or markets, plowed fields and played in the streets. My own family originated in that world, and I thank Roman Vishniac for giving me a glimpse of it. I highly recommend this book.

I was amazed at the quality of the images and the sensitive approach to what has become an amazing record of that,which many of us could only imagine from verbal accounts.It is without doubt the best photographic recording of a society which was to be brutally decimated. Vishniac's photographic artistry in my mind are on a par with Cartier Bresson whom I greatly admire. Thanks to the publisher for printing such a wonderful book.

What is incredible is how Vishniac captured the variety of Jewish life in late 1930s eastern Europe--from the streets of Warsaw, Cracow, and Lublin, to villages in the Carpathians. His photographs also contrast the extreme poverty many Jews fell into at the time (especially as a result of official boycotts of Jewish establishments) with the richness of intellectual and religious life (the two being inseparable in that time and place).

We are shown grandfathers and babies, sages and porters, tzaddiks and merchants, women in the market, boys in cheder, children at play. While strife, anxiety, and resignation are seen on the faces in many of the photographs, there are also many smiling faces--some shy, some beaming at the camera. The most beautiful are those of small children--a girl returning home with a pot of soup and a bottle of milk for the family's dinner, so pleased; a small boy looking off at something his classmates do not see; a boy on a crowded street giving the photographer a friendly wave.

Also of great value are Vishniac's captions, printed at the front of the book. One hopes that some publisher will bring this valuable book back into print.

Excellent photos taken by professional. I like it's.
This is part of a little-known history of my people for me. Photos Vishniak gave me the opportunity to touch the atmosvere Jewish town in those years.

This book is probably the greatest book I have seen on the subject of the vanished jewish 'shtetls'. It is very moving, and also, at the same time, a wonderful piece of art to put on the table in the living room. If this book were to be re-printed, many people would want to own one. No doubt about that.