A Deeper Meaning Of Books

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:29:49 GMT

I recently discovered the book A Vanished World--a collection of photographs of Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe on the cusp of World War II taken by Roman Vishniac, a Russian-American photographer with Jewish roots. Vishniac risked his life and freedom numerous times to snap these pictures with a hidden camera to smuggle them out to people who might be in a position to help. By the time the shots reach 1938 the photos are, of course, stark and bleak. Most of his pictures--something like 15,000 out of 17,000--were confiscated and/or otherwise destroyed. You can guess how many people listened to his photographic warnings otherwise.

He didn't just take pictures of people, though, but elements of Jewish culture that were likewise threatened. The second picture is this photo of a Ukranian rabbi's books, and Vishniac offered the following commentary, which I'll reproduce here with no further commentary of my own:

In the shtetl, people lived in poverty but were rich in the wisdom of Jewishness. These books, as crowded together as the people, were like living beings. I can almost hear, still, the krechtzen (groans) and moans of suffering and feel the hopes and expectations of the worshippers reading the pages. Like the undernourished children of the shtetl, the books were frail. So tragic, that the books and the people shared a common fate. Three years after this picture was taken, this community and its books were destroyed by the Nazis.

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Madwriter

A Deeper Meaning Of Books