Children of a Vanished World

Roman Vishniac

by Kim Darwin, coordinator of the Associates of University of California Press

Behind every book is a story, sometimes as rich and compelling as the book itself. Children of a Vanished World, edited by Mara Vishniac Kohn and translated by Miriam Hartman Flacks, published this fall, has such a story. Roman Vishniac (1897-1990) was one of this century's most celebrated photographers. A biologist by training, he pursued a career in microphotography, or the photographing of insects, cells, plankton, and other small organisms. His images regularly appeared in Life magazine. His portraits, however, particularly of Eastern European Jews in the years before World War II, are his best-known work. From 1935 to 1938 Vishniac explored the cities and villages of Eastern Europe, recording life in the Jewish shtetlekh, or villages, of Poland, Romania, Russia, and Hungary, communities that even then seemed threatened--not by destruction and extermination, which few foresaw, but by change.

But the story is not Roman Vishniac's alone. His daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, selected the photographs and took a major role in seeing that the book was published. Her daughter, Naomi Schiff, and son-in-law, Randall Goodall, who are proprietors of the design house Seventeenth Street Studios, moreover, designed the handsome book. Miriam Hartman Flacks, a Brooklyn-born native speaker of Yiddish, culled her own memory and conducted extensive research to find the appropriate and significant verses and music and then she translated them.

Mara Kohn, Randall Goodall, Naomi Schiff, and Miriam Flacks recently spoke about their collaboration on the book.

How did this book originate?

Mara Kohn: I had wanted to publish this book for a long time. Originally I conceived it as a children's book. I did not want it to focus on children as victims. Instead, I wanted to show them playing, studying, and simply being children in their world, a world that was about to disappear. I peddled the idea to commercial publishers, and editors loved it. But it was later turned down by their colleagues. Finally, a friend said, "Why don't you go to a university press?" I called my daughter, Naomi, who recommended Stanley Holwitz, Jewish Studies editor at the University of California Press's Los Angeles office. She and Randall had designed many books for UC Press. So call I did, and he said, "Oh, we love Randall and Naomi, and this project sounds wonderful. Jim Clark, UC Press director, and I will see you in Santa Barbara in a couple of days." I nearly fainted dead away! Stanley Holwitz is truly an author's editor, and I've been pleased with everything from start to finish.

What is the importance to you of publishing these photographs?

Mara Kohn: I want us to remember the children my father loved, the children of "a vanished world." Selecting the photographs was difficult at times. About half of them had been published before as part of another book, A Vanished World.. But others had not been seen and deserved publication. Photographs of the children and their daily life are poignant, particularly when you consider that a few years later most of them had been taken to concentration camps and most likely died.

What was it like working with your daughter and son-in-law in a professional capacity?

Mara Kohn: Well, I trust them, and we communicated very well. Naomi did the layouts and came up with the idea of the pronounciations below each line of Yiddish. Randall selected the type, paper, and page colors and made sure each image was next to the appropriate verse.

This has been an exciting time for your family. Not only has your book been published but your husband, Walter Kohn, has also won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Mara Kohn: Yes, it has been exciting. We were not able to travel to Stockholm last year, but we will this year, and I plan to promote Children of a Vanished World in Sweden as well as in Germany.

How did you find your collaboration with your mother-in-law?

Randall Goodall: Wonderful! Actually, unlike some authors, she kept an arm's distance from the design process. She did insist, however, that the type size be large enough for readers over sixty.

The book is a symphony in whites and grays. What were some of the design challenges?

Randall Goodall: One challenge was positioning three "languages" on the same page. There is Yiddish text, English text, and the English transliteration of the Yiddish text. I decided to have two columns of type, with the transliteration set just below the Yiddish in cool gray. Finally, it was challenging to incorporate musical examples into the design.

Naomi Schiff: It was very important to my mother for the book not to be depressing. She wanted to show the children as the energetic and engaging individuals they were. The book is a remembrance of a happy time in life. I think the pictures look lively because the cool grays and whites of the photographs contrast with the warm grays and whites of the borders and text pages. The photographs are the brightest part of the book. They really pop out from the page.

What element of the book pleases you most?

Randall Goodall: I especially like the relationship between the photographs and the text. I think each image makes a wonderful connection with the words.

What stands out for you from researching the Yiddish texts?

Miriam Hartman Flacks: By far the strangest sensation was sitting in the YIVO in New York, using modern technology like computers and microfiche and reading texts that were published so long ago, some from the first decade of the twentieth century. I felt like I was straddling all the decades between. For example, there was a weekly children's magazine called Little Green Leaves. It was a reader sent to schools, and in it there were poems, stories, and letters from pen pals in Argentina. It was surreal looking at the minutiae of everyday life from a time so long ago. I hope mothers and fathers today will use the book to teach their children the songs and continue to preserve their heritage.

The pictures and text capture the many phases and activities of children.

Miriam Hartman Flacks: They're meant to. This is absolutely not a Holocaust book. There was a living history and living culture in Jewish Eastern Europe. This book is about life.