Vishniac (2024), by Laura Bialis
The Auschwitz Museum account on Twitter honors, every day, several people who were sent to the concentration camp. Some of them survived, most didn’t. The work being made by this account is formidable, as it helps put a face and a name on the victims of a massacre that must be remembered so it never happens again.
It is estimated that the USA received 85,000 Jewish refugees, people who almost made it to the Holocaust statistics. In all, about 12,5 million people left their countries during World War II because of Nazi persecution. It’s important to tell their stories, too. The new documentary “Vishniac” shines a light on one of these refugees, Roman Vishniac, a man of many interests and talents.
Roman Vishniac was a microbiologist, writer and photographer. With his camera, he immortalized a way of life that totalitarism tried to erase from the face of the Earth. He photographed segregated schools and hospitals because, being a Jew himself, he had a free pass in these environments. He was making documentary photography when this kind of photos were still slowly appearing.
Roman Vishniac was born in the Russian Empire in the turn of the century, and since childhood showed an interest in science. As it’s stated in the documentary, science and the new art form of photography walked hand in hand, with many scientists conducting their researches through the photos of the objects being studied instead of having the real thing in front of them.
Vishniac left his home country after the Russian Revolution and with his wife Luta he went to Berlin, where his two children were born. Berlin was chosen for being a beacon of science and freedom during the Weimar Years (1918–1933). Berlin’s case is a good example of rights for minorities and other “liberal” laws triggering an ultraconservative wave that destroyed everything that was accomplished. It’s a cautionary tale for us.
In 1940, Roman Vishniac, his new wife Edith and his two children, Mara and Wolf, left Germany and arrived in New York. Finding several gigs as a photographer, as the war was still going on Vishniac’s photos of pre-war Europe were a success in publications and expos. After the war, Vishniac became sort of an ambassador for scientific research, something that stimulated his son to also become a microbiologist.
Roman Vishniac’s works are preserved by his daughter Mara. When Roman died, she was left with thousands of photos, “treasures” as she calls them, and started organizing a book that later was used as inspiration by the cinematographers of “Schindler’s List” (1993). One curious bit: the Oscar-winning film was directed by Steven Spielberg, while one of the produces in “Vishniac” was Spielberg’s sister Nancy.
Mara’s account of a children’s book being distributed officially at school deserves our attention. The book said that the devil created the Jews, and that Jews were too lazy to work in the development of the nation. Indoctrination since an early age is one of the weapons used by fascist governments to create not citizens, but followers for a leader or an idea.
Vishniac documented everything, including his children’s childhood and family life. Because of that, much of Mara’s narration is accompanied by family photos, and only a few live-action scenes are reconstitutions with actors and a male voiceover narration.
There are many women in the behind-the-cameras team. Writer Sophie Sartain is a seasoned writer of documentaries, while director and producer Laura Bialis directed seven docs since 2000 and won awards for her work. It’s not Laura’s first dive in Holocaust survivors’ stories: the documentary “Tak for Alt: Survival of a Human Spirit” (1998) was co-directed by her.
There is, in the Holocaust Museum in the USA, a permanent Roman Vishniac exhibition. We can’t investigate and trace back to all the people photographed by him to find out who survived the Holocaust, but for the data that exists, we can say that the minority survived. As we’re losing the last Holocaust survivors, we must look for new ways of telling the story of the Holocaust. Using Roman Vishniac’s photos of a past forever and brutally lost is a good way to re-start the conversation.
