Pay Attention to the Signs: Learning Warning Signs from Vishniak’s Pre-Holocaust Europe

I wrote last week about our impactful visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial, on our trip a couple of weeks ago to Israel. The night before that tour, we had a powerful prelude to set us up for the experience. We attended the world premier of a documentary produced by Nancy Spielberg, sister of Steven Spielberg, entitled “Vishniak.” The film tells the story of renowned scientist and photographer, Mark Vishniak. Vishniak’s gift to the world was a collection of photos documenting the propaganda campaign against the Jews in pre-Holocaust Europe.

Vishniak was born into an intellectual Jewish family in Russia in 1883. His family emigrated to Berlin in 1917 when the Bolshevik Revolution made it unsafe for Jews in Russia. At that time, Berlin was a haven for Jews. It was a center of art, scholarship, and culture that embraced and celebrated Jewish talents. However, Vishniak’s honeymoon period in Berlin began to wane as Adolph Hitler began a gradual campaign to convince the general populace of Germans that all their ills and misfortunes were the fault of the Jews. His message was that Jews controlled everything, and therefore any negatives in their lives were brought about by Jewish greed. Hitler’s venom spread slowly at first, starting in schools to indoctrinate the young against Jews, and growing into boycotting Jewish-owned enterprises. While this was happening, Vishniak had the foresight to begin photographing evidence of the growing hate. Signs were popping up condemning Jews, with caricatures exaggerating Jewish noses and making Jews look evil and ugly. When it became illegal for Vishniak to take pictures of those posters, he strategically posed his daughter in front, with the signs off to the side in the background, claiming he was photographing his little girl.

When Vishniak was in Eastern Europe photographing the growing horrors of life for Jews in ghettos, soldiers came to his Berlin home to arrest him. His wife got word to him not to return, and he re-routed to Paris. Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass,” erupted in Germany and Austria on November 9-10, 1938, destroying Jewish businesses and burning sacred books. The family decided it was time to try to come to America. Though it was almost impossible to get a visa for the family, luck had it that his wife’s birth country was Latvia. She managed to obtain a Latvian visa to America that covered herself, her husband, and her son and daughter. The Vishniaks settled in New York, where he preserved his photographic collection revealing the horrors of pre-Holocaust life for Jews in Europe.

What is especially significant about the Vishniak story is that the Holocaust didn’t happen all-of-a-sudden. There was a gradual building up of hate. In all candor, that seems eerily familiar to today’s world. Anti-semitism is at an all-time high. The Anti-Defamation League reports that acts of anti-semitism in the U.S. rose 36% in 2022. The rise in attacks against visibly identifiable Orthodox Jews rose 69% in 2022. Since the outbreak of war in Israel, antisemitism is skyrocketing. Antisemitic posts online have increased 1200% since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. College campuses across the U.S. are hotbeds for fomenting hate against Jews. Anti-Jewish speakers are welcomed on school campuses, making Jewish students feel unsafe. It’s happening at Harvard, Penn, NYU, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, Cornell, and likely in your own backyard, no matter where you live. Celebrities are asserting that Jews control the media, business, and the entertainment industry, blaming Jews for your misfortune. Rallies are even calling for the extermination of Jews. Is this beginning to sound familiar?

My son-in-law Ira Savetsky had a very wise uncle, Adolph Feuerstein (“Unkie”), a Holocaust survivor. Unkie warned repeatedly: “You say you’re comfortable in America. Well, let me tell you something. We were comfortable in Europe too.” Then look what happened.

We need to heed the warning signs. Hamas has been saying since its first charter in 1988 that its mission is to “obliterate” Israel. This vicious attack is not coming out-of-the-blue. We have been told over and over again that Hamas wants to kill all Jews. My wife Laurie had an intellectual Aunt Marjorie Cooper who lived in Haifa, Israel. I once asked Aunt Marjorie to explain the lesson of the Holocaust. Typically very erudite and poetic in her choice of words, she boiled down her answer to these few words: “The lesson of the Holocaust is that when someone says they want to kill you, you should believe them.” It’s as simple as that.

We are living in dangerous times. We must look out for each other and be vigilant. It’s time to pay attention to the signs.

Some might question what this post has to do with my “Family Legacy Planning” weekly series. Legacy planning is the process of creating a meaningful heritage to pass down to our descendants, leaving them an inheritance that’s more than money. Those of us who care feel we owe it to our future generations to leave them a tomorrow with hope, love, and family connection. I think this post fits right in.

Marvin E. Blum