Stalingrad Attack

Georgi Zelma

1942

Photograph of soldiers holding guns as they approach ruins of a bombed city.
Georgi Zelma’s photograph of soldiers charging up Mamayev Hill with their guns at the ready became one of the iconic photographs of Soviet heroism in the battle of Stalingrad. What draws the eye, however, is the total devastation into which they are headed, the smoke-filled ruins of what was once a busy, vibrant city.

Credits

Georgi Zelma / Slava Katamidze Collection / Hulton Archive / Getty Images.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Georgi Zelma

1906–1984

Georgi Zelma was a Soviet photojournalist who worked as a Central Asian correspondent for several photo agencies and publications. Born in Uzbekistan, Zelma moved in 1921 to Moscow for three years before joining the photo agency Russfoto. His knowledge of Russian and Uzbek languages served him well as a translator, and he spent much of his career documenting the effects of Soviet policy on rural life in Central Asia. Zelma’s photographs adhere to the principles of socialist realism. For a series on Soviet Jewish life, he traveled to Birobidzhan in the Jewish Autonomous Region, photographing the region’s Jewish loggers and farmers. During World War II, Zelma was a correspondent for Izvestiia, most famously documenting the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943.

Related Guide

Visual and Material Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century

1939–1973

Jewish visual art flourished and diversified in the postwar period, reflecting the social and political transformations taking place in the world.

You may also like

Painting of two mutilated soldiers with crutches, one with no legs and the other with one leg.
Tooltip info icon

The Mutilated

Yankl Adler painted The Mutilated in London during a period of heavy bombing in homage to “the behavior of Londoners under great stress and suffering.” He made two other paintings the same style and…
View Source
Photograph of children holding hands in a circle and dancing around an alligator statue as a city burns in the background.
Tooltip info icon

Memories of a Peaceful Time

Emmanuel Evzerichin was one of several Soviet Jewish photographers who documented the battle of Stalingrad. Many of his photographs were unusual in that they focused not on combat, but on the effects…
View Source
Portrait painting of a bald man, whose face looks gaunt and injured, looking at the viewer.
Tooltip info icon

Portrait of Yitzhak Katzenelson

Yitzhak Katzenelson (1885–1944) was a Hebrew and Yiddish poet from Łódź who was imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he was extraordinarily prolific as a poet, playwright, translator and public…
View Source
Bronze sculpture depicting a standing man, surrounded by harsh foliage and holding a rooster above his head.
Tooltip info icon

The Prayer

Jacques Lipchitz created The Prayer in 1943 to express his horror over the mass murder of Jews, which was then underway in Europe, reportedly crying as he made the statue. The central figure in The…
View Source