Photograph: Cemetery

European Jews

Podolia province, Proskurov Okrug, Shtetl of Medzhybizh

1927

Gelatin silver printing with chemical development (DOP)

8,4 x 11

РЭМ 4681-7

“It is of the old cemetery that the little people are especially proud. This old cemetery, though it is overgrown with grass and with bushes and has practically no upright headstones, they still value as they might a treasure, a rare gem, a piece of wealth, and guard it like the apple of their eye. For, besides this is not only the place where their ancestors lie, rabbis, men of piety, learned ones, scholars and famous people – there is reason to believe that many victims of Haydamak atrocities of Chmelnitsky’s time have their graves there. This “holy place” is their only tiny bit of property in this world, of which they, the little people, are the masters, the only inch of land and the only patch of field they own, where a blade of grass can sprout and a tree can grow and the air is fresh and one can breathe freely” (Sholem Aleichem, The Town of the Little People. 1901).