Camera Obscura

קאַמעראַ אָבסקוראַ

CELEBRATE │ INVESTIGATE │DOCUMENT

Pre-Second World War Lithuanian Jewish photographs provide a unique and irreplaceable record of a civilisation that no longer exists. Camera Obscura is a combined cultural history and provenance research project that celebrates these images through the eyes of the mostly forgotten women and men who made them, that investigates their theft and near-total destruction during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Lithuania between June 22, 19411 and January 28, 1945, and that documents the present locations and—wherever possible—the previous life stories of the few photographs that survived the war. Camera Obscura is funded with assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the EVZ Foundation, the German Federal Ministry of Finance, the Jewish Historical Society of England and a wide range of kind-hearted and generous people around the world. The project is ongoing, and is far from complete. If you’d like to make a financial contribution towards its continuing development, please don’t hesitate to write to us for more information.  

1 March 22, 1939, if you include the Klaipėda Region/Memel Territory.