Children of a Vanished World

Photographer Roman Vishniac has made a significant contribution in these collection of photographs of a lost era - between 1935 and 1938, Vishniac travelled the cities and villages in Eastern Europe, taking pictures of children in the Jewish communities of Poland, Romania, Russia, and Hungary. Little did those children know that the shadow of death loomed over them, as Hitler and the Nazis were becoming ever more powerful, and anti-semitism was about to become more prevalent, on a scale that no one could have imagined possible. These pictures are so precious - they tell a story of childhood and innocence, of happy times, of children being children, before they were robbed of all their happiness, security and innocence. The compelling portraits are accompanied by selected nursery rhymes, songs, poems and chants for children's games, both in Yiddish and in English translation. This is an important piece of documentation for we all know the fate of most of the Jewish communities in eastern Europe during WW II. I can't help but wonder at the eventual fates of these children, but at least the photographs in this book stand as a testament to the rich lives they once led, filled with hope and possibility.

The emotion that produces Vishniac's work,in the Eastern Europe Jewish comunnities a few years before the II World War is hard to put in words, because it's really a world that vanished not because of progress but because someone, with hatred, erased it from earth. I feel grateful to Vishniac cause he allows us not to forget.

I am an amateur photographer. 90% of good photography is in finding the right subject. These photos are stirring.

This is a powerful book. In its pages we find starkly beautiful black and white photographs of children laughing, crying, playing, studying, working, in the course of their daily life... unaware of the horrific nightmare that will overtake them soon and destroy their world.The children's eyes look at you with all the innocent curiousity and wonder of eternal, universal childhood. You look again and apprehension grips you: in a few short years after being photographed, the future of many of these children will be brutally terminated in an unmarked mass grave or a crematorium. The poignancy of this harsh reality is driven home when you read editor Mara Vishniac Kohn's dramatic description of her father's desperate, futile efforts to use his photographs as a means of arousing the conscience of the world and inspiring action to save these children and their families. We learn that Roman Vishniac sent these photos to the White House, only to recieve a perfunctory note thanking him for "the excellent pictures you sent the President."I must express my heartfelt compliments and appreciation to the editors, Mara Vishniac Kohn and Miriam Hartman Flacks, for the way in which they have presented these precious images-- accompanying them with the lyrics of appropriate Yiddish children's songs, in the original Yiddish and English transliteration and translation, rather than the standard dry caption text. I am especially grateful to the editors for including the music and annotation for these wonderful songs. This book belongs in every home and library.

This book moved me a great deal. The black and white images convey such innocence in the children. The simplicity of the beautifully produced photographs juxtaposed with children's songs and rhymes (in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English) gives the impression of viewing the images in a gallery. The photographs, the narrative, and the publication itself are of very fine quality. And the message is unforgettable.