Roman Vishniac

Children of the Vanished World -- some 70 photographs from Roman Vishniac's 16,000 collection are dramatized at Toronto's Leah Posluns Theatre -- part of Holocaust Education Week at the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre. On November 9, 1938, as Germany enacted their Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) program -- which is now seen as the beginning of the Holocaust, where the German government launched an onslaught against its Jewish citizens -- Roman Vishniac was starting to document the Eastern European children of the shtetlekh. He took some 16,000 photographs, before he and his family fled to the United States, where he tried to get help for the children -- but was met with indifference. Today, his photographs are the only surviving documentation of vanished people and culture. To think, even after what the Jewish people suffered, the world has learned nothing -- from Africa, Israel and elsewhere on the globe, we continue our indifference, as those in power continue to try and destroy other groups. It's enough to make you not want to wake up in the morning.