New exhibit shows WWII through the eyes of Jewish Soviet photographers

New exhibit shows WWII through the eyes of Jewish Soviet photographers
New exhibit shows WWII through the eyes of Jewish Soviet photographers

New exhibit shows WWII through the eyes of Jewish Soviet photographers

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Last month marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army. That event, and many others over the course of the war were documented by Soviet photographers. Adding additional power to these images is the fact that many of the people behind the cameras were Jewish. A new exhibition opened Sunday at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie. It’s called Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust. It features 60 photographs taken by Jewish photographers in the Soviet Union from the 1930s through the end of World War Two. The exhibition is based on a book of the same name by Professor David Shneer. Morning Shift’s Jason Marck caught up with Shneer for an inside look at the exhibit, and the history behind it. Since its earliest days of in Russia, photography was actually considered a “Jewish profession,” and Shneer explains how that came to be.(Flickr/whatsthatpicture)