Di Farshvundene Velt. [The Vanished World].

The finest photographic documentary of Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the 1920s and 30s.

First and only edition of this rare photographic work, that has never been superseded. In addition to choosing from some thousands of postcards and family photographs submitted by readers of the Yiddish 'Daily Forward', the editors were able to reproduce images previously published in the Forward's Rotogravure section by the photographers Alter Kacyzna and Menakhem Kipnis. Additionally, the now famous images of Roman Vishniac were first presented to the public in this work.
The book is profusely illustrated with black and white reproductions of photographs, and divided to two parts: 1) Jewish Cities; 2) Jewish People.

Raphael Abramovitch (1880–1963) was a Russian Jewish political activist - a socialist, member of the General Jewish Workers' Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (Bund), and the leader of the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (RSDRP). As a Marxist he was part of the Jewish Bund. He took part in the Russian Revolution on the side of the Mensheviks. After the Bolshevik victory he fled to Germany, then France, and eventually to the United States. Abramovitch was a vocal opponent of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

First edition; landscape 4to (21 x 27 cm); publisher's red cloth boards with woodcut illustrated paste-down and gilt lettering, corners slightly rubbed; title-page illustrated with the same woodcut as cover, numerous photographic illustrations, text in Yiddish and English, some marginal browning to pages, closed tear to one of the free endpapers and a few small marginal tears to pages; joints cracked,but holding; 575 pp.