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Roman Vishniac Quotes

Roman Vishniac was a Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. A major archive of his work now rests at the International Center of Photography.Vishniac was a versatile photographer, an accomplished biologist, an art collector and teacher of art history. He also made significant scientific contributions to photomicroscopy and time-lapse photography. Vishniac was very interested in history, especially that of his ancestors, and strongly attached to his Jewish roots; he was a Zionist later in life.Roman Vishniac won international acclaim for his photos of shtetlach and Jewish ghettos, celebrity portraits, and microscopic biology. His book A Vanished World, published in 1983, made him famous and is one of the most detailed pictorial documentations of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe in the 1930s. Vishniac was also remembered for his humanism and respect for life, sentiments that can be seen in all aspects of his work.

In August 2014, the International Center for Photography in New York City announced that 9,000 of Vishniac's photos, many never printed or published before, would be posted in an online database.

✵ 19. August 1897 – 22. January 1990
Roman Vishniac photo
Roman Vishniac: 11 quotes0 likes

Famous Roman Vishniac Quotes

“These are the faces of children I embraced and kissed and loved. I cannot imagine that they are dead, that none would survive… A million and a half children among the six million… But this I knew… I wanted to save their faces, not their ashes.”

Roman Vishniac

Mitgang, Herbert (Oct. 2, 1983). Testament to a Lost People. New York Times Magazine. pg 47.

“You can't teach biology with a bottle containing dead animals and organisms.”

Roman Vishniac

Shepard, Richard F. "Roman Vishniac, 92, a Biologist And Photographer of Jews, Dies". New York Times (1859-Current file); Jan 23, 1990; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1951 - 2002) pg. D23.

“I read the first edition of 'Mein Kampf' when it came out in 1923 and even then I knew Hitler meant what he said. I knew the history of anti-Semitism going back for centuries, and I knew all about pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. When I grew up and whent to school in Moscow, I experienced anti-Semitism and the restrictions on where Jews could live and work. Hitler systemized anti-Semitism. Pogroms are my business… Oh yes, I could be a professor of anti-Semitism.”

Roman Vishniac

Testament to a Lost People

“Nature, God, or whatever you want to call the creator of the universe comes through the microscope clearly and strongly”

Roman Vishniac

ICP Library of Photographers. Roman Vishniac. Grossman Publishers, New York. 1974. pg 42.

“The purpose of photography is the transmission of a visualized sector of life through the medium of the camera into a mental process that starts with the photographer's thinking about the subject he photographs and is continued in the mind of the spectator.”

Roman Vishniac

Deschin, Jacob. "Nature as it is". New York Times (1857-Current file); Feb 3, 1952; Proquest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2002) pg. X14

“The Jews of the shtetls that Tolstoy remembered were saints… the people I photographed were saints. So now, in 1983, I tell the world: When you learn about Goethe, don't forget to study the Holocaust, too.”

Roman Vishniac

Testament to a Lost People

Roman Vishniac Quotes

“My friends assured me that Hitler’s talk was sheer bombast,” Vishniac said in 1955. “But I replied that he would not hesitate to exterminate those people when he got around to it. And who was there to defend them? I knew I could be of little help, but I decided that, as a Jew, it was my duty to my ancestors, who grew up among the very people who were being threatened, to preserve — in pictures, at least — a world that might soon cease to exist.”

Roman Vishniac

“Concentration camp money… It was a German sadism that invented it. Can you do anything with it? Yes, you can cry.”

Roman Vishniac

Testament to a Lost People

“[The Jews who roamed through Moscow looking for work] had a special kind of face … a special kind of whisper and a special kind of footstep … They were like hunted animals.”

Roman Vishniac

“Even before the concentration camps, I felt it was my duty to my ancestors to preserve a world which might cease to exist.”

Roman Vishniac

Testament to a Lost People

“…can you call a farm with a dozen geese a farm? Still, it was a little better for the Jews in Czechoslovakia. There were only two pogroms there. What's two pogroms?”

Roman Vishniac

Testament to a Lost People

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