Alter Kacyzne

Alter-Sholem Kacyzne was born on 31 May 1885 to a poor working-class family in Vilna in Imperial Russia (now Vilnius in Lithuania), within the Pale of Settlement.[1] His father worked as a bricklayer and his mother worked as a seamstress. He was educated in a Cheder and in the Russian-Jewish school. He spoke Yiddish at home. An avid reader, he taught himself Hebrew, Russian, Polish, German and French.[1]

Following the death of his father in 1899, when Kacyzne was fourteen, he went to work as an apprentice in his uncle's professional photography studio in Ekaterinoslav, New Russia (now Dnipro, Ukraine). While engaged in self-education, he began to write short stories in Russian. He wrote poems and sent some of these to the Yiddish author S. Ansky.

Around this time he married Khana Khachnov. In 1910, greatly attracted by the Yiddish works of I.L. Peretz, he moved to Warsaw, where he opened a photographic studio.[1] He developed a close relationship with Peretz, who became his literary mentor.[1]

In the 1920s, he worked as a photojournalist for the New York City-based newspaper Forverts (Forward).[1] He traveled as a photographer to Poland, Romania, Italy, Spain, Palestine and Morocco.[1] In the years 1927–1928 Kacyzne's photographs, accompanied by his travel essays, were published in the Warsaw magazine Our Express.

His work as a photographer was combined with his literary work. As a critic and essayist, he published articles on literary and social issues in Warsaw and Vilna. He was co-editor of several journals.

In the early 1920s the founded the literary series The Ark (Di Teyve, 1920, together with David Einhorn), short-lived magazines Bells (Glokn, 1921) and The Links (Ringen, 1921–1922, in cooperation with Michal Veiherte ). In 1924 he became co-founder of the magazine Literary Pages (Literarishe Bleter, 1924–1939; together with Israel Joshua Singer, Peretz Markish, Melehom Ravichem and Nachman Mayzilem).

In 1930 he participated in newspapers with a communist orientation: Literary Tribune (Literarishe Tribune; 1930–1933), Tribune (1934), Comrade (Der Fraynd, 1934–1935, Yiddish: דער פֿרייַנד), Literature (Literatur; 1935) In 1937–1938, he issued the fortnightly magazine, My film speaks (Mayn redndiker film), the contents of which were critical articles, translations and Satires.

In 1939, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, he fled with his family to Soviet-occupied Lwów (today Lviv, Ukraine).[1] He became in charge of the literary section of the Lviv State Jewish Theater.

Kacyzne tried to escape Nazi persecution in Poland and moved to Ternopil in 1941. By the time he arrived the Nazis had already occupied the city. He was beaten to death by Ukrainian collaborators during an attack on the town's Jewish population (pogrom – 7 July 1941). His wife Khana was murdered in Belzec extermination camp, while his daughter Sulamita survived by hiding in Poland as a non-Jew.[2]

Arriving in Warsaw in 1910, Kacyzne opened his own photography studio. Originally it was located on Długa street; the address changed several times. Kacyzne worked at portraits, shooting memorable events (weddings, bar mitzvah), and soon became a well-known photographer. The turning point in his professional career as a photographer began in 1921, when he was commissioned by a charitable organisation based in the United States of America the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) to make a series of images dedicated to the life of Jews in Polish cities and towns, including the eastern lands that were part of the territory of Poland – Galicia and Volyn (Kacyzne travelled to more than 120 Polish settlements). These images so impressed Abraham Cahan, Chief Editor of the New York newspaper Forward, that he suggested that Kacyzne document Jewish life in Poland for readers.

Reading the Mishnah. Pinsk. 1924

The Cheder (School). Lublin. 1924

Wolf Nachowicz, the gravedigger, teaches his grandson to read, while the boy's grandmother looks on with pleasure. (Biala Podlaska, Lublin province).

Kacyzne's precious historical collection was almost entirely destroyed during the Nazi occupation; only a selection of 700 photographs survived. After the Holocaust, the imagery acquired not only artistic but also historical value, documenting the pre-war life of the Polish Jewish community. These photographs, which are an important part of Kacyzne's work, are now kept in the YIVO Archive (Institute for Jewish Research) in Manhattan and in the Bibliothèque Medem of Paris.

• Poyln: Jewish Life in the Old Country (Metropolitan Books, 1999) ISBN 0-805-05097-3[3]

• 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Yiddish Literature category for Poyln: Jewish Life in the Old Country[4]