The photographer Roman Vishniac created some of the most iconic images of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, documenting a world that would soon vanish. He also chronicled the rise of Nazism and the aftermath of World War II. However, the public has never had the opportunity to appreciate the breadth and depth of his work—of Vishniac’s 10,000 negatives, only about 350 have previously been published. The Museum has worked with the International Center of Photography (ICP) to put those images online and invites the public to help us learn more about Vishniac’s photographs.
Who Was Roman Vishniac?
Roman Vishniac photographed this girl in Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia, circa 1935–38. She is one of the many people curators hope to identify by making Vishniac's work available to the public. —Gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley
Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) was born to a Russian-Jewish family. He grew up in Moscow where he studied biology and zoology. Vishniac’s family left Russia after the revolution and, after completing his studies, he joined them in Berlin. There he pursued his passion for photography by documenting life in his new city.
As the Nazis rose to power in Berlin, Vishniac photographed the ominous changes in the city and also worked to document Germany-Jewish relief and social service organizations. In 1935, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) hired Vishniac to travel to Eastern Europe and take photographs documenting Jewish poverty and relief efforts to be used in its fundraising campaigns. In 1939, Vishniac pursued other AJDC assignments in Western Europe and worked as a freelance photographer there. After the German invasion of France, he was arrested and sent to an internment camp. With help from the AJDC and the remainder of his family’s resources, he secured release and immigrated with his wife and two children to the United States via Portugal in December 1940. They settled in New York, where Vishniac worked as a photographer, making portraits and documenting Jewish refugees and American-Jewish community life.
In 1947, Vishniac returned to Europe to document the aftermath of the war and the plight of refugees and those living in displaced persons camps. Back in the United States, Vishniac continued his work as photographer and scientist and became a pioneer in the new field of photomicroscopy.
Explore More
- Maya Benton, International Center of Photography curator, was interviewed for the Museum's Voices on Antisemitism podcast series
- Film Roman Vishniac made of Jewish farmers in the Carpathian mountains ca. 1938
- Outtakes from a film Roman Vishniac made at a Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor (ORT) vocational training facility near Marseilles in 1939
- Roman Vishniac made this film of his children, Wolf and Mara, in ca. 1926–27
- International Center of Photography exhibition Roman Vishniac Rediscovered
- Roman Vishniac Archive at The Magnes Collection, UCLA Berkeley
Vishniac’s photographs of Jewish life in prewar Eastern Europe gained renown in the aftermath of the Holocaust and were used to illustrate numerous books. Many people today are familiar with his work from his book Vanished World (1983). However, the public saw only a small fraction of Vishniac’s work before his daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, entrusted his images to ICP and the Museum. This project makes them available to the public at large in hopes of learning more about the subjects of his photographs.
How You Can Help
Though Vishniac took thousands of photographs he only captioned a small fraction. By comparing his photographs to others in the Museum’s collection, Museum staff members have identified a number of people and locations, as you can see in this photo gallery featuring Vishniac photos and photos of the same subjects from the Museum archives. We invite you to view his full collection—spanning the prewar and postwar period—on the ICP website to help us make further identifications. If you recognize a person or a place, click the link below the photograph ("Add to the record") to generate an e-mail to Museum and ICP curators. Your efforts can help others learn about the vanished world documented by Vishniac.
Photo Gallery
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Roman Vishniac befriended Henryk Schwartz, a cantor and traveling salesman from Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia, during his numerous visits to the town. In this photo taken by Schwartz in 1937, Vishniac holds his Leica camera in a bustling market. 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. —Gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley
The photographer Roman Vishniac created some of the most iconic images of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, documenting a world that would soon vanish—but captioning few of his photographs. Through a partnership with the International Center of Photography, Museum staff have discovered more about some of Vishniac's most well-known subjects.
The Farmer
This portrait of a farmer and tanner made circa 1935–38 in Vysni Apsa, Carpathian Ruthenia, is a well-known Roman Vishniac image, but the photographer’s caption did not name the man. When Lisa Wahler saw the photograph in the Museum’s Permanent Exhibition, she recognized her grandfather, Chaim Simcha Mechlowitz. —Gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley
Lisa Wahler later donated a collection of family photographs—such as this image of her grandparents and six of her grandfather’s ten children—to the Museum and shared her family’s story. Her mother, Brucha Zelda Mechlowitz, left Vysni Apsa for Western Europe before World War II. She was deported from Belgium to Auschwitz. She survived incarceration and a forced march before American forces liberated her in May 1945. Chaim Simcha Mechlowitz was deported to Auschwitz after Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944. He did not survive. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Lisa Wahler
The Sisters
Roman Vishniac made this image of sisters (left to right) Marion, Renate, and Karen Gumprecht shortly after they arrived in the United States in September 1941. While their names were known, the Museum was able to give context to their image from a collection of family photograph’s donated by Karen Komar, née Gumprecht. —Gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley
In this photo, from the Museum's collection, the Gumprecht family walks down a street in Hamburg prior to their departure for the United States in July 1941. From left to right are Wilhelm Jotkowitz and Renate, Edith, Karen, Werner, and Marion Gumprecht. Jotkowitz, Edith's father, was unable to leave with the others and later perished in the Minsk ghetto. The Gumprecht family crowded with more than 1,000 other refugees onto the Navemar in Seville. Conditions on board the Spanish freighted, which had been built to carry 15 passengers, were so horrendous that an American newspaper described it as a floating concentration camp. Werner Gumprecht wrote a detailed letter describing the family’s journey from Hamburg, which Marion Portman, née Gumprecht, and her husband, Sheldon, donated to the Museum. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Karen Komar
The Young Girl
Roman Vishniac made this image of Nettie Stub, age 11 from Hanover, Germany, in the Polish detention camp Zbaszyn in November 1938. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee sent Vishniac to Eastern Europe to make photographs for a fundraising campaign. The pictures he took have become some of the iconic images of the Holocaust. After she saw the photograph of herself in A Vanished World and contacted him, Roman Vishniac gave Nettie Katz, née Stub, prints of photographs he made in the Zbaszyn detention camp. She donated them to the Museum, which allowed curators to give more context to the well-known image of her taken by Vishniac. —Gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley
In this photograph taken in happier times, Nettie Stub poses next to a chalkboard on the first day of school in Hanover, Germany, in September 1935. After Vishniac photographed Stub in Zbaszyn, the Red Cross took her to Sweden, where she survived the war. Her parents and two siblings were not able to leave Poland and perished. An older brother tracked Stub down in Sweden after the war, during which he was incarcerated in Buchenwald. Together, they immigrated to New York in 1945. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Nettie Stub Katz
The Survivor
The International Center of Photography asked Judith Cohen, director of the Museum’s Photo Archives, whether it would be possible to identify the woman in this Vishniac image by her tattoo number. Cohen checked with the Museum’s Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center, which was able to locate the number in the records of the International Tracing Service. She is Hanna Stern Weinberger, a physical therapist and masseuse, pictured here at the Jewish Hospital for Joint Diseases in East Harlem, New York, ca. 1948–51. —Gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley
Hanna Stern Weinberger had registered as a Holocaust survivor and given an oral history. Along with her registration she provided this family photograph. Weinberger was born in Neisse, a small town in Germany near the Czech border, in 1924. During the early years of the war she worked in a factory in Berlin. In April 1943, she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She survived Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Buchenwald, before escaping from a forced march and hiding in the woods until Germany surrendered. She immigrated to the United States in 1946 and became a masseuse because it was a way to work in the medical field without having graduated from high school. At the age of 57, after her two sons graduated from college, Weinberger finally began her college education. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum
