A pho­to­graph­ic trib­ute that high­lights the sto­ries behind rem­nants of Jew­ish com­mu­nal life in post-war Poland, west­ern Ukraine, Lithua­nia, and Latvia.

In 1992 Cana­di­an doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and pho­tog­ra­ph­er David Kauf­man trav­elled to Poland to pro­duce a tele­vi­sion pro­gram about hid­den child sur­vivors of the Holo­caust. A decade lat­er, he returned to make films about the War­saw Ghet­to Upris­ing and the Łódź Ghet­to. Kauf­man was deeply moved by the qual­i­ty of Jew­ish mate­r­i­al cul­ture — the phys­i­cal rem­nants of Jew­ish life — that he saw on these ear­ly vis­its. In 2007 he set out on the first of many trips over two decades to record images of ten­e­ments, fac­to­ries, syn­a­gogues, and ceme­ter­ies that were part of every­day Jew­ish life in pre-Holo­caust east­ern Europe. He also made pho­tos of some of the places of despair and death where Jews were killed dur­ing the war.

The Posthu­mous Land­scape is more than an act of pre­serv­ing mem­o­ry. Kauf­man brings his decades of doc­u­men­tary sto­ry­telling expe­ri­ence to bear, illu­mi­nat­ing these places left behind. His pho­tographs and accom­pa­ny­ing texts describe a his­toric com­mu­ni­ty that played a major role in the devel­op­ment of east­ern Euro­pean soci­ety and which left behind grand indus­tri­al com­plex­es, urban neigh­bour­hoods, archi­tec­tur­al land­marks, beau­ti­ful syn­a­gogues, as well as vast ceme­ter­ies, and haunt­ing memo­ri­als. The pho­tographs also tell the sto­ries of the after­lives of those places, many repur­posed, some lov­ing­ly cared for by non-Jews who remem­ber, and oth­ers slow­ly return­ing to the earth, but which are pre­served in this book’s pages.

Some read­ers will find here names from their own fam­i­ly his­to­ries. All will dis­cov­er a visu­al land­scape that bears wit­ness to the vital­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty of East­ern Euro­pean Jew­ry before its destruction.

With intro­duc­to­ry essays by polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Bernard Avishai and Pol­ish jour­nal­ist and her­itage activist Joan­na Podol­s­ka, The Posthu­mous Land­scape is a trib­ute to a com­mu­ni­ty that met a trag­ic end and a tes­ta­ment to how our inter­nal land­scapes are inex­tri­ca­bly bound to the places of our past.