Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War and the Holocaust (Jewish Cultures of the World) - Hardcover

Shneer, David

4

8 ratings by Goodreads

9780813548845: Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War and the Holocaust (Jewish Cultures of the World)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813548845 ISBN 13: 9780813548845

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2010

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Finalist for the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category Most view the relationship of Jews to the Soviet Union through the lens of repression and silence. Focusing on an elite group of two dozen Soviet-Jewish photographers, including Arkady Shaykhet, Alexander Grinberg, Mark Markov-Grinberg, Evgenii Khaldei, Dmitrii Baltermants, and Max Alpert, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes presents a different picture. These artists participated in a social project they believed in and with which they were emotionally and intellectually invested-they were charged by the Stalinist state to tell the visual story of the unprecedented horror we now call the Holocaust. These wartime photographers were the first liberators to bear witness with cameras to Nazi atrocities, three years before Americans arrived at Buchenwald and Dachau. In this passionate work, David Shneer tells their stories and highlights their work through their very own images-he has amassed never-before-published photographs from families, collectors, and private archives. Through Soviet Jewish Eyes helps us understand why so many Jews flocked to Soviet photography; what their lives and work looked like during the rise of Stalinism, during and then after the war; and why Jews were the ones charged with documenting the Soviet experiment and then its near destruction at the hands of the Nazis.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

"This book provides visual evidence that promises to revise significantly popular and historical understanding of the Holocaust as it occurred in places, unlike Auschwitz, where there were no survivors."--Joan Neuberger "University of Texas at Austin " "David Shneer''s utterly original and fascinating new book opens a whole new way of seeing ''through Soviet Jewish eyes.'' It is a treasure-trove of Soviet-Jewish World World II-era photographs, many of them published here for the first time, and a brilliant guide to their surrounding historical content."--James E. Young "author of The Texture of Memory and At Memory's Edge " "David Shneer's utterly original and fascinating new book opens a whole new way of seeing 'through Soviet Jewish eyes.' It is a treasure-trove of Soviet-Jewish World World II-era photographs, many of them published here for the first time, and a brilliant guide to their surrounding historical content."--James E. Young "author of The Texture of Memory and At Memory's Edge "

About the Author:

DAVID SHNEER is associate professor of history and director of Jewish studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His books include Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.