A Vanished World - Softcover

Vishniac, Roman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374520232 ISBN 13: 9780374520236

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986

Synopsis

This pictorial history of Jewish life in Germany in the 1930s before the Holocaust, shows the stories of individuals, their increasing poverty, sad wisdom and enduring love in the years leading up to World War II.

About this title

Review:

Roman Vishniac's A Vanished World is an extraordinary record of the lives of German and Eastern European Jews in the years immediately preceding the Holocaust. Vishniac, a Russian Jew, began to take photographs of village life during World War I, when Russian Jews who lived near the front were accused of being German spies and were deported to Siberia. He later moved to Germany, where he witnessed the horrible events of Kristallnacht and the anti-Jewish legislation that allowed Hitler to declare his enemies stateless and therefore unworthy of international protection. As we study Vishniac's photographs--a surviving fraction of the more than 16,000 he took--we are aware that we are seeing the faces of those soon to die, witnessing a world that has all but perished. Yet that world, of shops and schools, of busy streets and quiet farms, remains with us if only as a ghostly memory, thanks in part to Vishniac's compassionate eye.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0374520232
• ISBN 13: 9780374520236
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192