The Elephant in the Darkroom
דער העלפֿאַנט אין דער טונקל־קאַמער
AN INVESTIGATION
The near-simultaneous arrival of the daguerreotype and the spread of the Jewish Enlightenment—or Haskalah—in mid-19th century Lithuania brought about the conditions for a cultural phenomenon that was ultimately responsible for the creation of more than 10 million unique photographs before the vast majority of their living authors were murdered during the Holocaust. The Elephant in the Darkroom1 is an unprecedented provenance research project whose purpose is to make publicly available all surviving information concerning both the wholesale looting, expropriation, destruction and displacement of these magnificent images during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Lithuania during the Second World War, and to simultaneously investigate and document the theft of all other valuable Jewish-owned property in Lithuania during the same period.
The project is a constantly evolving work in progress. To download the 2025 Cheat Sheets, click here and here.
1 The Elephant in the Darkroom is produced with grateful assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the EVZ Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Finance.
TIMELINE
1939
MARCH 22
Nazi Germany occupies the Lithuanian city of Klaipėda and the region that surrounds it, the regime’s last uncontested land grab before the outbreak of the Second World War. Adolf Hitler pays a personal visit the following day, and the city is officially (re)named Memel. According to various accounts from the period, the first few weeks of occupation are accompanied by episodes of enthusiastic—official and opportunistic—violence and looting.
AUGUST 23
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that contains a secret protocol dividing Europe in two for the benefit of their individual expansionist goals. Lithuania falls within the Soviet sphere of influence.
SEPTEMBER 1
Nazi Germany invades western Poland.
SEPTEMBER 3
Great Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany. The Second World War officially begins.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER
The Soviet Union invades eastern Poland, including the city of Wilno, a few days later. The regime temporarily governs—and plunders—the city until October 28, when Wilno is renamed Vilnius and it becomes the newly restored capital of the Lithuanian republic. In return, the Lithuanian government agrees to host 20,000 Red Army soldiers on its territory.
1940
JUNE 15
The Soviet Union launches a full-scale invasion of Lithuania, followed by invasions of Latvia and Estonia the following day.
JULY 14-15
Two days of fraudulent elections end in the Moscow-backed Liaudies Seimas (People’s Government) taking political control of the country.
JULY 17
Following Nazi Germany’s invasion of France in May, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (see Glossary ↓) is founded with the sole purpose of looting valuable art and cultural property from all the countries in Europe and North Africa occupied by Nazi Germany. A large percentage of this property is Jewish-owned public and private property.
JULY 20
The Soviet Law on the Protection of Cultural Monuments is ratified, paving the way for the mass nationalisation of almost all cultural and religious property in the country. Nearly every Jewish cultural and religious organisation is either closed or reorganised along ‘Soviet principles’, and their contents are mostly confiscated and taken away to locations still largely unrecorded. Several Lithuanian museums play a major role in the expropriation of countless thousands of works of art and other significant cultural objects. The law is still in place. See the Republic of Lithuania Law on Museums in the Glossary (↓) for more information on the subject.
AUGUST 3
Although effectively already a member in all but name, Lithuania is officially incorporated into the Soviet Union.
A very short history
The Lithuanian Jews were a predominantly Yiddish-speaking people of mostly Ashkenazi descent who numbered more than 150,000 men, women and children when they were viciously decimated by the Nazis and their willing local companions between 1941 and 1945. With the exception of a tiny handful of early anomalies, their presence in increasingly large numbers can be traced back to the 14th century, and the first in a series of privileges that would render it increasingly easy and more attractive to settle. What the Lithuanian Jews built was indeed nothing less than a civilisation, and their influence continues to leave rich and abundant marks throughout the world, not just in Lithuania. This site focuses nearly all of its energy on events that took place in Lithuania during the Second World War. There are plenty of sources—some better and consierably more balanced than others—to find out more. Today’s Lithuanian Jewish population still living in Lithuania would probably fit on a bus.
1941
JUNE 14
The first mass Soviet deportations to Siberia take place. Among the victims are the Zarasai-based Lithuanian Jewish photographer Moisiejus Botvinikas (1901-1984) and his family. See the Zarasai section in The Invisible Magicians for more information on the subject.
JUNE 22
Nazi Germany starts its invasion of the Soviet Union, including Lithuania.
JUNE 24
The recently founded Lithuanian Provisional Government (see Glossary ↓) tries and fails to restore Lithuanian independence and take back control of the country.
JUNE 30
Five days after the German military occupies the Lithuanian city of Telšiai, Pranas Genys, the 39-year-old founder and director of the city’s Alka Museum, writes two letters to the mayor, the first requesting permission for the museum to take temporary possession of all the glass and other negatives belonging to the city’s Jewish-owned photography studios, and the second asking if the museum can also take temporary possession of all photographic equipment belonging to the same businesses. The mayor replies on July 2, granting the director permission to take temporary possession of both on behalf of the museum. They still have the negatives. The equipment—or at least some of it—seems to have been confiscated from among Genys' private possessions' when he was arrested by the NKVD in 1951.
LATE JUNE-EARLY JULY
The Catholic theologian, Hebraica expert and serial looter Johannes Pohl (1904-1960) arrives in Vilnius on behalf of his employer, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg/Adolf Hitler.
JULY 9
Either on or very close to this date, staff from the Aušros Museum in Šiauliai and the city municipality conspire to break into the apartment and photography studio belonging to the 29-year-old Lithuanian Jewish photographer Mauša Fligelis, who it’s believed has fled to Soviet Russia ahead of the Nazi invasion. Among the expropriated objects listed on the official documents still held by the museum are at least one valuable camera, studio lighting, and miscellaneous pieces of darkroom equipment. It’s believed but not yet proven that the photographer’s glass plate negatives and a number of personal/family prints were also among the haul.
JULY 17
The German civil administration takes over from the military.
AUGUST 5
Increasingly aware that it has zero power and/or influence, the Lithuanian Provisional Government dissolves itself and ceases to exist.
AUGUST 15
The Kovno Ghetto and the Šiauliai Ghetto are established.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER
The Čekiškė photographer Leizer Beker and his wife, Šifra, are murdered sometime during the late summer. The non-Jewish family who move into their empty house find several of the couple’s personal photographs. These photographs still exist, but it’s so far proved impossible to locate them. Today, Leizer’s nephew and extended family live in Alaska, and have expressed a strong desire to possess them. See also Leizer's entry and The Box in The Invisible Magicians.
SEPTEMBER 6
The Vilna Ghetto is established.
SEPTEMBER 6-10
The Germans issue a decree on September 4, carried out September 6-10, demanding that the Jews imprisoned in the Kovno Ghetto hand over all their valuables, an event that’s become known as the Kaunas Gold Aktion. Judging from what was taken from Seredžius (see September 29 ↓), this haul included expensive Leica cameras. No paperwork associated with the Aktion has so far been found.
SEPTEMBER 8
The last surviving Jewish residents of Butrimonys are believed to have been murdered on or around this day. One family’s personal photo album miraculously survives. It’s now in the possession of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. having been 'donated' by a Lithuanian, despite two members of the family surviving the Holocaust, and their direct descendants living in Poland and the United States.
SEPTEMBER 29
A few days after the last Jewish man, woman and child from the small town of Seredžius has been murdered, a two-page inventory of all the valuable possessions that once belonged to the victims and that are now the 'property of the German Reich' is produced. Among the gold and silver watches, wedding rings and kiddush cups is a single camera, whose recorded serial number shows it to be a Leica III that was manufactured in Wetzlar in 1935 and shipped to Berlin on February 19 before it was shipped to Lithuania on an as yet unknown date. Further investigation shows that after it was stolen from its murdered Jewish owner from Seredžius in 1941, it was repaired in Wetzlar on October 27, 1949, and again on November 11, 1956. The precise details are not public knowledge.
1942
JANUARY 21-26
The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg pays a visit to the Vytautas the Great Culture Museum in Kaunas (today the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art). Among the Jewish cultural objects they seize are a collection of photographs from the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society in Lithuania that got there under unknown circumstances. Photographs from the Lithuanian headquarters of OZE are also suspected of having been taken at the same time.
FEBRUARY 11
The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg pays a visit to the Vilna Ghetto, an event that inadvertently brought about the creation of the so-called Paper Brigade. See Glossary (↓) for more.
FEBRUARY 18-JUNE 8
The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg produces a document that includes an inventory of the cultural objects held by YIVO in Vilnius. Among the items listed are the institution’s main photo collection and another collection of photographs belonging to YIVO’s in-house Theatre Museum. .
1943
SEPTEMBER 23
The Vilna Ghetto is liquidated.
1944
JULY 13
The Nazi occupation of Vilnius ends when the city is ‘liberated’ by the Red Army.
AUGUST 26
With the help of several other survivors and the necessary Soviet bureaucracy, Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski open the so-called Jewish Museum for Culture & Art (see also Glossary ↓), first in their apartment and later in the former Vilna Ghetto library. Plans for a similar institution in Kaunas aren’t so successful, and the Soviets eventually succeed in closing the Vilnius institution five years later. Among the objects in the museum’s possession are 2,162 photographs from a variety of sources. Although it's known that some photographs made it back to the state-owned museum, now known as the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, nobody's ever made a serious attempt at tracking all the still missing photographs down.
1945
JANUARY 28
The last German soldiers flee western Lithuania after the Red Army’s victory at the Battle of Memel. Two Lithuanian Jewish photographers, Judelis Kacenbergas and Chanonas Levinas (see The Invisible Magicians) photograph the day’s events, the latter photographing an anonymous Red Army soldier in the process of looting an unusual trophy. One regime replaces another.
ARIL 30
Adolf Hitler commits suicide in Berlin.
MAY 8
Nazi Germany surrenders, officially marking the end of the Second World War in Europe.
Aftermath
Pranas Genys (see June 30, 1941 ↑) is arrested by the NKVD on April 27, 1951. Found among his possessions is a large collection of professional studio photography equipment. He dies in prison the following year, taking his many wartime secrets to the grave.
GLOSSARY
Considerably more than just an interesting read, the Glossary provides useful and practical information to help readers get more involved in the subject of their own research. As with everything on Camera Obscura, the Glossary is very much a work in progress, and is far from complete.
A
ACQUISITION RECORD BOOKS
A short but often very useful record of each object a museum owns, from furniture to photographs, kept in various books All museums, archives and libraries in Lithuania are required to keep them. It’s understood that the general public, including historians and researchers etc., generally need to get permission from the director of the institution in order to see them. The exact legal position however remains a mystery. Many appear to have been lost during the Second World War. Pretty much essential for anyone doing any kind of provenance research in museums etc.
ALKA MUSEUM OF SAMOGITIAN HISTORY
Website
See The Elephant in the Darkroom Cheat Sheets (↑), and the institution’s entry in Hidden Treasures.
ARCHIVES
No archives are complete. No archives are without mistakes. Methodology is subjective. More coming soon.
AUŠROS MUSEUM
Website
See The Elephant in the Darkroom Cheat Sheets (↑), and the institution’s entry in Hidden Treasures.
B
BALTIC PROPAGANDA SQUADRON NO. 3
Not much known at present, either about them or precisely what they did. They seem to have been involved in looting somehow.
ALEKSAS BRUNAS
The Lithuanian Jewish photographer Giršas Rivkindas and his wife Luiba’s former studio in Šiauliai seems to have been taken over by the Lithuanian photographer Aleksas Brunas in 1944 after the Šiauliai Ghetto had been emptied of its last inhabitants. This no doubt explains the fate of a great many Jewish photography studios around the country during the war, an as-yet completely unresearched subject. What on earth happened to all that equipment and all those negatives?
C
COMMISSION FOR THE LIQUIDATION OF JEWISH PROPERTY
A local department in every Lithuanian municipality was given the task by the occupyers of sorting out Jewish possessions. Distribution mostly went via local auction or given to the 'needy'. Any valuables were added to a list and handed over to the Germans. A fascinating subject that remains off limits and strictly taboo in Lithuania. How many valuable things were diverted at source was no doubt considerable.
D
DARKROOM
Coming soon.
E
EINSATZSTAB REICHSLEITER ROSENBERG
Founded soon after the Nazi invasion of France in May 1940, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) was created for the sole purpose of looting cultural treasures from countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Part of the German Foreign Office, and based in Berlin, during the five years the ERR was in existence, it plundered property from hundreds of thousands of private homes, art galleries, museums, libraries and other institutions to a total value in today’s terms of over €300 billion. The ERR was run by the eponymous Alfred Rosenberg, an enthusiastic Nazi who briefly led the National Socialists during Adolf Hitler’s short spell in Landsberg Prison between April and December 1924, and who was executed in Nuremberg on October 16, 1946 at the age of 52. Divided into several departments, of which there were six in total—Sonderstab Bildende Kunst, Sonderstab Wissenschaft/Bibliotheken, Sonderstab Archiv, Sonderstab Musik, Sonderstab Kirchen/Kultus and Sonderstab Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage. Jewish property fell into each category, plus there was one of the six—Sonderstab Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage, or Special Staff Institute for Research on the Jewish Question—that dealt exclusively with Jewish property (in particular books, literature, art… and photographs), and had its own bespoke building in Frankfurt Am Main. More than eighty years after the event, research into the theft of Lithuanian Jewish property by the organisation has been pretty non-existent.
F
FIRST SOVIET OCCUPATION
An extremely complicated year before the arrival of the Germans. Expect some text soon.
G
PRANAS GENYS
Lithuanian poet and cultural figure, 1902-1952. Founded the Alka Museum of Samogitian History in Telšiai, and served as its first director. Surviving records in the Lithuanian Central State Archives in Vilnius show that between June 30 and September 8, 1941, Mr. Genys wrote at least three official letters on behalf of the museum, asking the city’s mayor for permission to take possession of all photographic negatives from Telšiai’s Jewish-owned photography studios, all technical equipment (cameras, lights, enlargers etc.) from the same businesses, and two silver items from unnamed synagogues. Today, the museum still has some of these items in its possession, plus many other cultural objects that once belonged to Jews. Genys, who was murdered by the Soviets in 1952, was never given the chance to explain about his activities. Research is ongoing.
GLASS PLATE NEGATIVES
Photographic glass plate negatives were originally produced using two different processes, wet (collodion) plate negatives from 1851 until the mid-1880s, and thereafter the so-called dry (gelatin) plate negatives, of which the latter are still manufactured in small quantities for a select group of people, who use them primarily because of the extraordinary image quality that they can provide. Generally available in three sizes, namely quarter-plate, half-plate and full-plate, the most popular in Lithuania before the Second World War, including in Jewish-owned studios, was the half plate variety, measuring 120mm x 165mm. Many of the more exclusive photography studios would advertise their businesses on the fronts and reverse sides of their often elaborate and fancy-looking prints, which often include variations on the words Негативь Хранятсяor (until approximately 1915), or the more pretentious Tous les Clichés Sont Conserves, which both loosely translate as ‘we keep all of our negatives’, alluding to the fact that some less well-off photography studios were sometimes forced to reuse their negatives by scraping off the original image and re-coating the surface of one side with a fresh layer of light-sensitive emulsion.
H
Historical contexts
A project-specific breakdown of the six roughly divided provenance research periods covered by the investigation.
Klaipėda/Memel
March 23, 1939-January 28, 1945
Nazi Germany invaded Lithuania on June 22, 1941. The Elephant in the Darkroom considers the date to be much earlier, i.e. March 22, 1939, when the Klaipėda Region/Memel Territory became the last uncontested area of land to be occupied by the Nazis before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Wilno/Vilnius
September 18, 1939-June 15, 1940
One of the more bizarre periods in the history of Lithuania began when the Red Army occupied Wilno/Vilnius on September 18, 1939. See Osvaldas Daugelis and Giedrė Jankevičiūtė’s Collecting Art in the Turmoil of War for some particularly interesting information on the subject of looting Jewish art and cultural objects in general that took place during the chaotic nine months that followed.
First Soviet occupation
June 15, 1940-June 22, 1941
The huge nationalisation programme that accompanied the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania saw the mass closure and/or restructuring of both secular and religious Jewish institutions all over Lithuania.
Provisional Government
June 22, 1941-August 5, 1941
A relatively short period during which Lithuanian institutions participated unilaterally in the expropriation of Lithuanian Jewish cultural objects.
German civil administration
July 17, 1941-January 28, 1945
During which various Nazi organisations appear to have carried out the majority of their looting operations in Lithuania.
Second Soviet occupation
July 1944/January 28, 1945-March 11, 1990
The theft of Jewish-owned property is (re)legitimised. See the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History in numerous places for more.
I
INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
Part of Goebbels’s propaganda ministry, the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question was part of Alfred Rosenberg’s insane plans for legitimising the destruction of the world Jewish population. Not to be confused with the similar sounding Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question.
J
JEWISH CULTURAL RECONSTRUCTION
An American organisation founded after the Second World War whose purpose was to gather together and redistribute all Jewish cultural property that no longer had an owner and/or whose original ownership was unknown. Most of the objects in question were books, of which nearly all were redistributed from the Offenbach Offenbach Archival Depot (↓). A considerable percentage of this literature is now located at the Library of Congress. An interesting article on the subject can be read here.
JEWISH DIGITAL CULTURAL RECOVERY PROJECT
Website
One of the main challenges for anyone with a personal and/or professional interest in researching Nazi-era looting of Jewish cultural property is trying to navigate the very fragmented information available. The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project is ‘creating a cross-searchable digital platform for archival documentation, research, and education on the looting of Jewish-owned cultural property by the Nazis, their allies, and collaborators’ that’s hoped will at least partly fix the problem.
K
Kinderaktion
Not to be confused with the Kindertransport...
Klaipėda Region
Coming soon.
L
LIMIS
Website
The Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System (LIMIS) was designed to give access to museum artefacts to all. Although navigating both the English and the Lithuanian interfaces can be exasperating to say the least, for the casual and/or curious user, it’s an undeniably brilliant website. Among its many irritating design faults is the fact that searching for photographs is impossible, as technically every single one of the 900,000 or so digitised artefacts on the site is a photograph/scanned image.
LITHUANIAN CULTURAL HERITAGE RESEARCH CENTRE
Website
Its archives are known to hold Soviet nationalisation lists of private art collections that were owned by Lithuanian citizens before the war. After translating what they needed into German, the ERR used these lists to identify collections that belonged specifically to Lithuanian Jews. What happened next appears to have never been researched. An example page from one of the lists is here. Also other important documents. Restructured in 2023. Now under the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture.
LITHUANIAN JEWISH PHOTOGRAPHY
Coming soon.
M
M. K. ČIURLIONIS NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ART
Website
The full story remains very much untold. Full of secrets. See also Hidden Treasures (↑).
O
OFFENBACH ARCHIVAL DEPOT
Coming soon.
ORIGINAL LOCATIONS
Private Homes. State Institutions. Private Institutions. Photography Studios. Photography Studio Storage Facilities. Police Records. Laboratories. Jewish schools etc. Newspaper Offices. Abroad.
P
THE PAPER BRIGADE
Coming soon.
R
REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA LAW ON MUSEUMS
The introduction of the Law on Cultural Heritage Protection by the occupying Soviet regime in July 1940 paved the way for the nationalisation of nearly all privately owned movable cultural property of value throughout Lithuania, a process that significantly enriched the collections of the country’s museums. When Lithuania began the process of re-establishing its independence from Moscow during the late 1980s, one of its priorities was to begin returning previously nationalised property to its rightful heirs and owners. Understanding that repealing the 1940 Law on Cultural Heritage Protection was going to leave the country’s museums embarrassingly empty (and its law courts conversely full) among other things, a clause was added to the Lithuanian law on Museums (V.18.2), making all possessions that museums acquired before March 11, 1990 the property of the Lithuanian State… in perpetuity. This indescribably cynical and clearly stupid law has been successfully challenged in the past, and will be challenged again.
RETOUCHER
Someone who cleans up/improves a photograph by changing tiny details, fixing flaws, scratches etc. Can be done to the original negative if it's large enough, or to the enlarged print if it isn't. Retouchers used to be employed by the better, more expensive studios, or the photographer would do it.
S
SD
Coming soon.
SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL LITHUANIAN PHOTOGRAPHERS
Lietuvos Fotografų Profesionalų Draugiją
Founded on March 13, 1926. The inaugural meeting at Laisvės al. 57 (today 97) in Kaunas attracted over 50 people, including the Lithuanian Jewish photographer Mejeris Smečechauskass, who was appointed to the board.
T
TOTAL DESTRUCTION
With just one known exception at present, every single original negative, studio camera, light and piece of darkroom equipment vanished along with the vast majority of Jews who owned and used them in the first few months of the Nazi invasion.
U
UNION OF LITHUANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY ENTHUSIASTS
Lietuvos Fotomėgėjų Sąjunga
Founded on December 17, 1932.
V
VILNA GAON MUSEUM OF JEWISH HISTORY
Website
In 1940 there were thousands of independent Jewish organisations throughout Lithuania, including libraries, theatre groups, synagogues and private schools, plus some larger organisations in the bigger cities, particularly in Vilnius and Kaunas. Almost without exception, all were closed when the Soviet authorities (i.e. Moscow) took control of the country in the summer of the same year. A tiny handful of the more substantial ones stayed open (VIYO and the Strashun Library in Vilnius are two such examples), but they were all nationalised, renamed and their collections altered to better reflect Soviet ideology. After the three years of genocidal insanity at the hand of the Nazis that interrupted the Soviet occupation, the return of the Soviets starting in the summer of 1944 saw the opening of a new Jewish institution in Vilnius on July 26 (there were also plans to open a similar institution in Kaunas, but it never came to pass), primarily the brainchild of the Vilna Ghetto survivors and members of the Paper Brigade, Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski (who was also its first director), and originally located in the apartment they shared in the city centre before moving to premises in the former ghetto library. Part museum, part research institute and part mausoleum, the institution, which fell under the auspices of the Commissariat of Education of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, was known as both the Museum of Jewish Art & Culture and the Vilna Jewish Museum during its short lifespan, and had a total of 2,162 photographs recorded among its collection among much more, limped along for five years until it was shuttered on June 10, 1949, and the collection split between different—non-Jewish—institutions. Although there were some Jewish activities allowed during the Soviet period, it wasn’t until September 6, 1989 that the Government of Soviet Lithuania passed Resolution No. 177 p, permitting the re-opening of the institution. Governmental Resolution No. 56 p, dated February 13, 1991, authorized the return of most of the scattered artefacts, and today the institution, which should be remembered is 100% state-owned, is known as the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History and has several different branches in a number of different locations.
W
WASHINGTON PRINCIPLES
Signed by Lithuania and 43 other participating countries on December 3, 1998, the Washington Principles on Nazi-Looted Art laid out the original conditions under which the signatory countries would begin identifying cultural objects—especially Jewish ones—held among the collections of their museums, archives etc. that were acquired as a result of Nazi persecution. Brought up to date in March 2024, when once again Lithuania endorsed the idea with an official signature, it’s worth remembering that the Washington Principles on Nazi-Looted Art are non-binding.
A WOMAN’S EYE
While the ratio of professional women photographers versus professional men photographers in The Invisible Magicians puts the former as representing about 14 percent of the total percentage of the historical workforce, which is surprisingly high in itself, the number of ‘home curators’ (for want of a better term) was much, much higher. Although things were slowly changing, it was still mostly women who arranged to have special family portraits made at professional photography studios and regularly kept a simple camera close at hand just in case. They also generally decided which photographs got stuck into albums and which ones got discarded, ensuring families always looked their best when visitors called.
Y
YIVO
Click. See also the entry in Hidden Treasures.
Z
Zach
Zach Miller flew from California to Lithuania in the summer of 2024 to locate his late grandma Chana’s house and to find out more about her early life and the lives of the family and friends she left behind and never saw again after she emigrated to the United States from Kaunas with her kid brother, Isaac/Isakas, in 1940. Armed with Chana and Isaac’s 50 or so original prewar photographs and other snippets of information he’d managed to assemble as part of his research, Zach was in Kaunas, trying to make sense of the spot he was standing on, which he was pretty sure was very close to the place where the house Chana used to live in once stood. Although some things had changed in the intervening 80 years, there were enough buildings and other landmarks to make sense of where he was located. Only something was wrong. One key photograph just didn’t make sense. He was just about to give up when he realised that the print had somehow been printed the wrong way round. After it was reversed everything made sense, and he was indeed in the exact place where his family once lived. There are booby traps located all over the research landscape. Be careful where you step.
ZAMLER
One who voluntarily collects artefacts for Jewish museums. Primarily but not exclusively before the Second World War. YIVO was very reliant on a large international network of zamlern in the early days.
LOST ART
The companion project to The Elephant in the Darkroom, Lost Art1 is dedicated to investigating and publishing all surviving information related to the wholesale looting, expropriation, destruction and displacement of all valuable non-photographic Jewish cultural property in Lithuania during the Second World War. For an overview of the project’s current published progress, download the latest version of the Lost Art Cheat Sheets here and here.
1 Working title.