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Jewish Literary Voices: A Federation Series in collaboration with The Jewish Book Council

A pho­to­graph­ic trib­ute that high­lights the sto­ries behind rem­nants of Jew­ish com­mu­nal life in post-war Poland, west­ern Ukraine, Lithua­nia, and Latvia.

Cana­di­an doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and pho­tog­ra­ph­er David Kauf­man was deeply moved by the qual­i­ty of Jew­ish mate­r­i­al cul­ture — the phys­i­cal rem­nants of Jew­ish life — that he saw on his work trips to Poland so he set out to record images of ten­e­ments, fac­to­ries, syn­a­gogues, and ceme­ter­ies that were part of every­day Jew­ish life in pre-Holo­caust east­ern Europe as well as the places of despair and death where Jews were killed dur­ing the war.

The Posthu­mous Land­scape is more than an act of pre­serv­ing mem­o­ry. Kauf­man brings his decades of doc­u­men­tary sto­ry­telling expe­ri­ence to bear, illu­mi­nat­ing these places left behind. His pho­tographs and accom­pa­ny­ing texts describe a his­toric com­mu­ni­ty that played a major role in the devel­op­ment of east­ern Euro­pean soci­ety and which left behind grand indus­tri­al com­plex­es, urban neigh­bour­hoods, archi­tec­tur­al land­marks, beau­ti­ful syn­a­gogues, as well as vast ceme­ter­ies, and haunt­ing memo­ri­als. And they are the sto­ries of the after­lives of those places, many repur­posed, some lov­ing­ly cared for by non-Jews who remem­ber, and oth­ers slow­ly return­ing to the earth, but which are pre­served in this book’s pages.

Some read­ers will find here names from their own fam­i­ly his­to­ries. All will dis­cov­er a visu­al land­scape that bears wit­ness to the vital­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty of East­ern Euro­pean Jew­ry before its destruction.

The Posthu­mous Land­scape is a trib­ute to a com­mu­ni­ty that met a trag­ic end and a tes­ta­ment to how our inter­nal land­scapes are inex­tri­ca­bly bound to the places of our past.

David Kaufman is a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Toronto.  His photographic work focused primarily on the architectural image and the urban landscape. 

Purchase the book HERE and a portion of the proceeds will be donated back to a local independent bookstore in the Berkshires.

Jewish Book Council