Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust

In 1942, Soviet photographers, many of whom were Jewish, got their first glimpse of the Holocaust at the southern Russian city of Kerch. In this talk, Shneer will trace the histories of the photographers and their photographic training as they confronted the hardest task they faced to date, bearing witness to the mass murder of Jews, Communists, and others. We will explore what images they took and contrast that which the images that appeared in the Soviet and global wartime press in multiple languages. Finally, Shneer will talk about the legacies of these photographs as both documents of war crimes and aesthetic images of haunting beauty.