Jews have lived for centuries in most every country of Europe, with the largest concentration in the Eastern European countries. They spoke Yiddish, along with the language of their native country. They lived in shtetls and villages and maintained their family and religious traditions within the dominant culture, but some would avail themselves of economic or educational opportunities in larger cities. In doing so they might still feel the pull of their traditional ways of life, especially in Western European countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands. Jews were found in the trades, but they were also farmers and factory workers. Others went into professions such as law, medicine, and teaching. Some were wealthy, but many more lived in grinding poverty. And there were Jews who excelled in the arts and music. Jewish tradition has always stressed the importance of social welfare and love of neighbor. And through it all there was a respect for open debate, communicative competence, and a plurality of opinion, witnessed not only in the Talmud and Midrash but as well in the myriad political and religious viewpoints and parties that were so much a part of the Jewish intellectual and political landscape. “Two Jews, three arguments” is not merely a joke.
Reflecting on the centrality of the family as a critical entry point into the study of the Holocaust, Wendy Lower (The Ravine) relates the achingly sad comment that for Jews consigned to ghettos, or deported to concentration camps, “the object most often packed…besides jewelry and currency, was the family photograph.” For Jewish families these photographs were not merely means to memorialize an important event, but as well affirmations of pride in a rich cultural heritage: traditions, beliefs, values, and ways of life forged and annealed in the crucible of the family and transmitted through the generations. They were a testament to Jewish emancipation and integration into civil society as full citizens entitled to equality and civil rights under the law.
The popular pre-World War II sepia-toned photographs of Jewish families often exhibit them dressed fashionably for the era, with an air of restraint and sobriety, but with a palpable pride. Many of these portrait photographs were arranged in studios, and for the family getting their portrait taken it would be an important event. Eventually the staid cabinet photographs would give way to the more adventurous and creative shots hand-held cameras permitted. At times itinerant photographers would bring the studio to the client: if one looks closely, one can see underneath the tapestry photographic backdrop the earthen floor of the shtetl where the photograph was taken.
For the Nazis, however, the individual photographs may appear superficially different, but they knew that Jews were fundamentally all the same, and there would be only one portrait of the Jew that meshed with Nazi racial theory: the Jew as pathogen, insidiously destroying the culture and political systems of the countries in which they lived. Racial purity and the concomitant superiority of the aryan race required that Jews, and every aspect of Jewish life and history, would have to be extirpated root and branch, so that the very possibility of reproduction itself would be obviated.
--Michael D. Bulmash, K1966
Browse the Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection.
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Polish Family Gathered for a Wedding
2021.1.36
A wedding party surrounds the couple, children sit at their feet
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Cabinet Photograph of Soldier and Family Taken in Nyitra, a City in Slovakia
2021.1.37
two women in near identical clothing, one standing and the other sitting, are next to a man in a uniform or suit who is sitting
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Russian Cabinet Card
2021.1.38
A woman sits to the left of two young children, the one in the middle standing and the child to the right sitting
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Turkish Jewish Men
2022.1.50
three men posed for camera, man in center is seated, others are standing
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Caucasus Jewish Family, Derbent, Dagestan
2022.1.45
zigzag edges; seated woman, standing man holding hands; damage by man's head
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Caucasus Jewish Family, Derbent, Dagestan
2022.1.44
seated from left to right: woman, girl, man; multiple crease lines throughout
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Caucasus or Mountain Jews, also known as Kavkazi Jews
2022.1.43
two children, one standing other seated on tricycle