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‘VANISHED WORLD OF POLISH JEWRY AT YESHIVA’ UNIVERSITY MUSEUM w/1 cut

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NEW YORK CITY — Yeshiva University Museum will present an exhibition of approximately 450 pre-World War II photographs of Polish Jews March 1–June 24. On view in New York for the first time, “And I Still See Their Faces: The Vanished World of Polish Jewry” was organized by the Shalom foundation in Warsaw, and has been shown throughout Europe, South America, Canada and Israel.

In 1994, the Shalom Foundation made a public request for photographs of Polish Jews and has since built an archive of some 9,000 photographs. Drawn primarily from nameless family albums, many of these photographs were abandoned by their owners or hidden for safe-keeping during the war.

The majority were submitted by Polish Jews who managed to flee the German occupation of Poland and their non-Jewish friends and neighbors. Once collected, the poignant photographs were digitized for reproduction. The 450 images selected for this exhibition have been published as a hard cover and online catalog, accessible at www.shalom.org.pl.

The photographs on view range in date from the late Nineteenth Century to 1940, and provide an intimate view of the everyday activities of Polish Jews prior to the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland. Rather than focusing on the devastation that ensued in the coming years, the exhibition offers insight into the rich prewar life enjoyed by the Jewish community.

Recorded Jewish settlement in Poland dates back to the year 965; by 1939, there were more than 3.1 million Jews in Poland, the largest Jewish population in Europe at the time. After the Holocaust, only about 200,000 Polish Jews survived; of these, most emigrated to the United States and Israel. Today, Poland’s Jewish population is estimated at 100,000.

Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History is at 15 West 16th Street (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues). For information, www.yumuseum.org or 212-294-8330.