Jewish photographers of Klaipeda / Memel

Some remarkes about Jewish photographers in Memel

Nadia Kaplan (nee Kaplan)

Born 15/12/1907 in Padubysis (near Raseiniai), died 13/2/2004 in Vancouver

self-portrait 1938 Memel, published in Zachor Remember, page 4, Vancouver, JAN 1996

Before the First World War, the family lived partly in Memel and after the war they moved there permanently. Nadia Kaplan stated that she studied photography with Zina Ida Blumental and received training from a local photographer. In her late thirties, she had her own photo studio. In late 1938, the family fled Klaipeda for Šiauliai. They managed to escape to Canada with a Sugihara visa in 1940.

Igor Kaplan and Ivar Segalowitz March 1936 by Nadia Kaplan

Ivar Segalowitz by Nadia Kaplan Klaipeda 1938 — Igor Kaplan and Ivar Segalowitz March 1936 by Nadia Kaplan

The surviving photos show their son Igor Kaplan starting school with his bench neighbor Ivar Segalowitz and a studio photo (1938) of Ivar Segalowitz. . The grandson William Kaplan later published a children book about the flight. Her daughter Nomi Kaplan became a famous photo artist in Canada.

George (Hirsh) Birman

Born 1922 in Koenigsberg, died 2009 in New York

Paula and Goerge Birman New York 2003 — Paula and George Birman New York 2003

He grew up in Garžgdai and attended the Lithuanian Grammar School in Klaipeda. He mostly traveled back and forth but also had many relatives in the city who he regularly visited. He received a camera at age 10 and took photographs avidly from then on. He saved his negatives through his time in the Kaunas ghetto and the satellite camp in Kedainiai. Many of the people he photographed before the war perished in the Holocaust. Ruth Leiserowitz visited him at his home in New York in the spring of 2003 for an interview. At the time, he showed her all his photos and allowed her to make copies of some of them. During a later stay in Berlin, he also visited the association “Jews in East Prussia.” Today, his photographs and his estate can be viewed at the USHMM.

Summer 1939. A new border between the Memel region, which had been reintegrated into the German Reich, and Lithuania was closed. — Fleeing Jews at the Memel railway station on March 22 1939

His pictures of fleeing Jews at the Memel railway station on March 22, 1939, are awe-inspiring. Another of his photographs reflects the situation in the summer of 1939. Now, the border between the Memel region, which had been reintegrated into the German Reich, and Lithuania was closed.

In connection with the project Camera obscura

Camera Obscura is an unparalleled cultural history and provenance research project that celebrates these pre-Second World War Lithuanian Jewish photographs.
Link to the project