A Journey in Jewish Communities : Photojournalists Document Culture in Eastern Europe

When musician Yale Strom talks about his recent trip to Eastern Europe to do research on surviving Jewish communities, his descriptions flash in the listener’s mind in an almost photographic fashion (not surprising since Strom photographed many of the scenes on the trip), but those scenes are complete with sounds, smells and feelings:

Scene: A night train ride between Belgrade and Bucharest. It is freezing cold, even with sleeping bags. Several older men ride in a small compartment and have little to keep them warm. Strom and Brian Blue, a photojournalist friend, open their sleeping bags and let two others come under the bags for what little extra warmth there is.

“Opening the bags made us lose some heat, but we all felt better inside,” Strom said.

- Scene: Strom and Blue at the Polish border, near Czechoslovakia. The film they are using to record the lives of the Jews of Eastern Europe is confiscated, and they are held by Polish guards. They do not tell the guards they are photojournalists, but say instead they are traveling musicians. The two play music for the guards (on violin and guitar), and the guards decide they must be harmless musicians. The film is returned and the two are free to continue into Czechoslovakia.

“Brian is not a professional musician,” Strom said, “but I never heard him play better in my life!”

- Scene: In Warsaw. Strom and Blue are attending the funeral of an elderly Jewish woman whom neither man knew. The gravediggers ask the two if they will help lift the casket into the grave. The casket is too large for the grave so, picking up a shovel, Strom drives the tool again and again into the frozen earth. The pick rings against the brittle ground in the cold air. Finally, after everyone standing nearby helps dig and claw the earth away, the casket is in--but at an odd angle. “Here was a woman who survived the Holocaust,” Strom said. “She was a product of the great Yiddish culture. For her to end this way seemed ironic.”

Strom, 28, planned the trip to Eastern Europe, then asked his friend, Blue, 27, to come along. The two began their journey in October, 1984, and spent five months in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria, before going on to Israel for 3 1/2 months.

Both took photographs, and Strom recorded observances in his diary and acted as interpreter (he speaks Yiddish and Hebrew). When they returned, they had 6,000 black and white photos documenting the survival of these culturally rich, yet dying, communities.

Strom said about 250,000 Eastern European Jews who survived the Holocaust (not including Soviet Jews, who number 1.5 million to 2 million) came back to their villages and have lived within and preserved their culture since that time.

Twenty of these photos (with captions and text by Strom) are on display at the San Diego State University library through Nov. 27, sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program at the university. The focal point of the show will be a party at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Casa Real at Aztec Center. Speakers will provide information about the Jewish Studies Program and Strom (on the violin) and his band, Zmiros, will play klezmer music (Yiddish folk music), said Ita Sheres, a professor of English and comparative literature and chair of the Jewish Studies Program.

A show of 90 to 120 of the photographs will be sponsored by the Maurice Spertus Museum of Judaica in Chicago in September, 1986. It will then travel to various museums, centers and galleries across the country, including Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco, Omaha and the Jewish Community Center in San Diego. Eventually, the show will travel to the Jewish Museum of the Diaspora (Beth Hatefutsoth) in Tel Aviv. This museum also plans to keep copies of all 6,000 prints in its archives.

The seed of the idea began in 1978 when Strom, then a student at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, took a short trip with friends to the Soviet Union. Intrigued with what he noticed of Jewish culture there, he returned to Europe in 1981 to research klezmer music and to do field recordings.

While in Eastern Europe, Strom discovered several communities of Jewish people. When he returned to the United States and began Yiddish studies at New York University as a graduate student in 1982, his professors were surprised and pleased to learn what still existed of that culture.

“It all began to come together then,” Strom said. “I knew I wanted to go back.”

Sitting in the home he lives in with his parents near SDSU (his father is a professor of education), Strom said, “I felt what I’d observed needed to be documented. I knew there were films and books about what was but little about what is.”

Strom planned the self-financed journey and “invited Brian to come along, so that we could work together.” Then he laughed good-naturedly, “Brian’s a Gentile, but after the trip he said now he’s been to more synagogues than he’s been to churches!”

Blue, a teaching assistant at the San Diego Academy for Neurological Development, said, “I really didn’t know what I was in for. It was a real adventure. I felt a real sense of compassion for the Jews, and also for the other people who lived there. I felt accepted and have warm memories.”

To find these communities and get to know the people, Strom began with contacts he had made on his earlier trip.

“We went to 28 different Jewish communities,” he said. “I found the synagogues first because Jewish life radiates from the synagogue. I’d ask questions, pray once or twice a day, and meet people. And we were invited to homes. I always had my violin with me. I played klezmer music for the people--the old folk music. Klezmer is the music of the heart. It opens doors, and it also can get you out of predicaments, as in the border incident. In Poland I even played a concert and gave a lecture-demonstration. A woman translated my words into Polish. Then we all sang and danced until 4 a.m.

“It was like being able to touch and understand these people. And everyone I saw was a product of the Holocaust.”

Strom is of Jewish descent; his grandparents came from Eastern Europe.

“I could understand my own grandparents’ background--their home life--from the foods they ate to the way they prayed,” he said.

“Some of these people survived without being in concentration camps. They went underground. Others went into the Soviet army or the central-eastern republics of Russia. An important fact along this line is that the Bulgarian government would not deport the Jews during World War II. Many people don’t realize that.”

Strom and Blue’s photos are reflective of and complimentary to the photos of Roman Vishniac, whose work documented the Jews in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. (A show of these photos was presented at the Museum of Photographic Arts in early fall).

Strom, in fact, has shown the recent photographs to Vishniac, now in his late 80s, and has the older man’s approval on the work he is accomplishing.

“Those communities are disappearing,” Strom said. “The young are leaving. They go to school, get an education and often go to Israel or to the West--and there is an increase in intermarriage. Also, the birthrate has been low. After the Holocaust many people thought, Why bring a child into this world? There was a reluctance to have families in that land. The ground is soaked with their blood.

“I asked an old man how many young people were there staying in the community, and the old man said, ‘ Vaynik (which means few). In 10 years maybe only I’ll be here. There’ll only be a few old Jews left.’

“The sadness, the sorrow and hatred are strong.

“For example, these people often see others of their own age on the street and know these others were guards during the Holocaust.”

“We’d hear stories, and we’d both hold back tears,” Blue said. “The people opened themselves to us--gave us their warmest moments and their darkest moments.”

“I felt I was in two time spans,” Strom added. “I felt I came as close to understanding their world as anyone who didn’t go through those times. Brian and I had a hard time physically during much of the trip. The winter was the harshest in 50 years. And there was little heat. It was 50 degrees in the hotel in Romania. The water was 45 degrees.

“I’m a vegetarian and ate hard cheese. The milk is not pasteurized, so I couldn’t take the chance of drinking it, so I ate ice cream, even though the weather was freezing. Once, we got carrots by standing in a long queue to get them, but when we got back to the hotel we realized they were frozen, and no good.

“We had holes in our shoes and were often cold and hungry. These physical aspects helped me feel for the struggle of many people--workers, South Americans--people who don’t have an easy life. People who don’t give up.”

Traditional Jewish life in the countries visited, according to Strom, is stronger in some areas than in others.

“The Eastern European countries with the largest number of Jews are Hungary and Romania, but the culture is dying fastest in Bulgaria,” he said. “Soon there will be only cemeteries and a synagogue there, and the synagogue will be a museum. By the year 2000, in all those countries, 70% of the Jewish people won’t be there.”

Strom said he met almost all the rabbis in Eastern Europe--eight in Hungary, one in Yugoslavia, one in Czechoslovakia and six in Romania.

Sheres, who was Strom’s professor when he was an undergraduate at San Diego State six years ago, said, “No one else has gone there and brought back firsthand information. He brought back both pictures and stories. He focused on various communities, showed the differences, showed the political structure, and made predictions about the future.

“The real scholarly contribution is his firsthand insight. In some places, the Jewish culture is almost annihilated, but in other places there is almost a Phoenix rising. The view is bright and bleak. Much of what he saw is distressing--the poverty--but the feeling of hope is something you didn’t expect. The pictures bring it all out. All aspects are represented.”

“Besides portraying the more stereotypical scenes of Hassidic Jewish life as immortalized in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ ‘Yentl’ and in Chagall’s paintings,” Strom said, “I also wanted for us to capture people looking a lot like you and me--men, women, children--going about their lives.”

The photos show various aspects of everyday life. One imposing photo is of a rabbi walking on a snow-cleared sidewalk, his white beard and flowing, tasseled robe showing his graceful dignity and purposefulness.

Another photo is of a wedding party. A fiddler plays, while the guests, even though indoors, are bundled up in caps and coats to protect against the cold.

Another is of small children being taught the Yiddish alphabet by young dark-haired women. One child looks off dreamily in a typically childlike way--as if the importance of learning the rare language is lost on her at the moment, and she might rather be outdoors playing.

There are harsher, darker photos too--for example, a wall with a swastika and a faint Star of David hanging from an executioner’s scaffolding.

One of the most powerful photos in the exhibit shows the hands of a Jewish man holding up a piece of the Torah cut in the shape of an inner sole. This page was cut to fit inside a German boot.

For Strom, the experience fits with his general approach toward life:

“I am an artist. I like to be creative.”

And his creativity has taken many forms. After the first European trip, he formed his band (“Zmiros” means Sabbath melodies), which plays locally and has played in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. He is also a published composer (traditional klezmer music and jazz), and has done work in arts and crafts.

Besides the photo exhibits, Strom plans two books, and a documentary film that both men will work on--and even an album of klezmer music with one of the photos on the cover.

“The first thing I’m going to do when the books are finished is send copies to all my friends over there. Some of them are in the photos and it will make them feel good. I haven’t forgotten them,” Strom said. “And I want to give a book to each community leader for that community’s library.

“And I’d like to do more work--to concentrate on one area; for example, I was told of Michalovce, Czechoslovakia, near the Russian border, where 40 Jewish families still live. I’d like to spend a couple of months in one area like that and live among the people and experience their daily routine.

“My work can’t wait, because every year that passes, there are fewer people.”