CAMERA OBSCURA
Pre-Second World War Lithuanian Jewish Photographs
A Pictorial History Exposed
Pre-Second World War Lithuanian Jewish Photographs
A Pictorial History Exposed
DOWN BY THE SEA
THE BALKS
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
LITHUANIA/RUSSIA 1878-1900
Born into a family of well-to-do Lithuanian Jewish merchants in the small town of Tauragė—or Tovrig (טאווריג) as it was once known by its former Yiddish-speaking inhabitants—on January 8, 1878, the young Leon Balk marries Mina Blumenthal in 1900 and escapes the numerous misfortunes associated with being a Jew in the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century and moves to England.
LONDON 1901-1903
Leon and Mina Balk are recorded in the 1901 UK census as living at 87 Leman Street in the Goodmans Fields area of Whitechapel, a part of London noted at the time for its large Jewish population and extreme poverty. Recorded as being a professional musician, Leon shares the same address with Woolf Kresovsky, a Lithuanian Jewish photographer who it can be assumed was at least partly responsible for his change of profession and subsequent relocation 100 kilometres or so to the south.
THE SUNSHINE COAST 1903-1915
Along with their first child, Maurice (born in London in 1902), the Balks move to the popular seaside resort of Eastbourne in Sussex, where Leon opens his first photography studio inside a small terraced house they also live in at 114 Langney Road. In 1904, Mina, now known as Minnie, gives birth to the couple's second child, Philip, and over the next decade Leon's business grows, and the family moves to nearby Bexhill-on-Sea, where Leon becomes an active member of the local community, playing violin in the Bexhill Brothers Orchestra and getting involved in various activities at the cricket club, much of it recorded in surviving copies of the weekly Bexhill-on-Sea Chronicle. Leon Balk becomes a naturalised British subject in 1906, and a third child, Bessie, is born in 1910. A year earlier, a young woman from Streatham in London by the name of Emma Whaley files a paternity suit against the photographer, claiming he seduced her at his studio the previous summer, showered her with gifts and made promises of marriage. The resulting child, also known as Leon, goes on to live a complicated and troubled life.
THE LOST YEARS 1915-1925
The arrival of the First World War and a series of further scandals involving not only Leon but also his wayward eldest son, Maurice, almost certainly contribute to the photographer's disappearance from the south coast of England in about 1915. In 1919, the Balks make a sudden reappearance, when they're recorded as living at 230 Seven Sisters Road in Finsbury Park, London. On February 24, 1923, Minnie Balk passes away of unknown causes, and the family promptly disappears again.
KLAIPĖDA 1925-1939
For reasons that can still only be guessed at, Leon and his young daughter move from London to Klaipėda, where on October 26, 1925 Leon marries a heavily pregnant Lina Bergmann, a 37-year-old German Jew originally from the East Prussian village of Ellernthal. The couple's first child, Judith, is born on February 15, 1926. Two years later, on June 26, 1928, a second child, David, is born. Leon, Lina, Bessie, Judith and David Balk live together at Junkerių g. 4 in Klaipėda's small Jewish quarter in the area roughly between today's Daržų g. and Galinio Pylimo g., where Leon also runs his studio. For more than a decade, the photographer earns a living photographing Klaipėda's growing and diverse Jewish community, completely unaware of the historical significance of his work.
EXODUS 1939
On March 18, 1939, Leon Balk passes away of unknown causes at the age of 61. Two days later, almost certainly on the same day the photographer becomes one of the last ever people to be buried in Klaipėda's 200-year-old Jewish cemetery, Joachim von Ribbentrop informs the Lithuanian government that if Lithuania doesn't return Klaipėda, Nazi Germany will invade the entire country. Over the next few weeks, the city's Jewish population of more than 6,000 people flee, most of them to the temporary safety of Lithuania. The recently widowed Lina Balk takes a train via Königsberg to Berlin, where on April 27, Judith and David's names are added to her passport at the British Embassy and the family escape to England.
THE HOLOCAUST 1941-1945
In August 1941, Lina Balk's two brothers and their families are forced into the Šiauliai Ghetto. Her 21-year-old niece, Mirjam, is the only survivor. After being liberated from Dachau in May 1945, Mirjam emigrates to Chile, where she marries and has two children. Mirjam Wiener née Bergmann dies in Santiago on July 2, 2001 at the age of 78.
TODAY
David Balk died at the age of 35 after a tragic accident in 1964. His eldest son, Martin, is alive and well and is helping fill in the gaps in the current research. Until such a time as they've agreed to be identified, the rest of the living Balk descendants remain anonymous.