Jewish life before the Holocaust in thousands of never-seen photos

Lauren Markoe

(RNS) In 1920, a young Jewish man with a keen eye fled anti-Semitism in his native Russia, arrived in Berlin and began snapping pictures. Roman Vishniac would go on to become one of the 20th century’s great photographers.

But Vishniac has always been appreciated for more than his art; the emigre created a visual record of European Jewish life before the Holocaust, documenting the world of shtetl rabbis, Jewish farmers, and Hebrew school students in his 1983 book “A Vanished World.”

“His photographs of pre-war Jewish life became the iconic face of a world that was destroyed,” said Judith Cohen, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum‘s photographic reference collection.


.http://www.religionnews.com/2014/08/29/jewish-life-holocaust-thousands-never-seen-photos/