Herman Lewinter photographs

Herman (Hersh) Lewinter (1907-1999) was born in Seretecz, Poland (now Seretets, Ukraine) to Emanuel Greensaid and Rosa Lewinter. He grew up in Markopol (Markopil') and Zloczow (Zolochiv). Lewinter worked as a photographer in Zloczow, and he and his wife Clara had a son named Manek. The Lewinter family was forced into the Zloczow ghetto during the German occupation. Lewinter was later transferred to the Janowska concentration camp, where he worked as the official camp photographer. He not only photographed scenes ordered by the Nazis but also documented the Holocaust through illegal photographs of atrocities. He escaped the camp and survived in hiding until liberation. His son was killed when the Zloczow ghetto was liquidated. After the war, Lewinter and his wife lived in Lviv with their second son, and Lewinter operated a photography studio. The family left the Soviet Union via the Bricha for Austria, where his daughter was born, and eventually immigrated to the United States. The Herman Lewinter photographs document the Janowska concentration camp, Lvov (now Lviv, Ukraine), and Zloczow (now Zolochiv, Ukraine). Images depict prisoners, camp staff, the Janowska prisoner orchestra, and corpses. Photographs include 15 images that were presented at the Nuremberg Trials and 26 photographs of photo collages with Russian captions that Herman Lewinter created at the request of Soviet investigators of Nazi atrocities.