_ Lublin/ Stefan Kiełsznia | Ulrike Grossarth

Lublin/ Stefan Kiełsznia

Lublin 1930s

Stefan Kiełsznia was born in 1911 in Lublin. He was a bookseller and a member of the Lublin Photography Association. In the 1930s he took a large series of photographs in the Jewish quarter that show everyday life shortly before this area was turned into a ghetto. This unique cycle of images documents life in prewar Lublin. Before the German occupation during the Second World War, Lublin was one of the centers of Jewish life in Poland. In particular many chapters in the multifaceted history of Eastern European Hasidism, which came into being in the mid-18th century in southeastern Poland and Ukraine and now survives in Jewish communities around the world, unfolded in the city. Lublin’s Jewish population was deported to Sobibór, Bełżec, and to the extermination camp Majdanek, which was situated in one of Lublin’s southern districts. Kiełsznia died in 1987.