Thieves

In addition to writing Yiddish fiction, poetry, drama, and criticism, Alter-Sholem Kacyzne was also a photographer of East European Jewish life in the interwar period. Born into a working-class family in Vilna, he opened a photography studio in Warsaw in 1910. In 1921, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of New York commissioned him to photograph the misery of Polish Jews who were seeking to immigrate to the United States. Soon after Abraham Cahan hired him to contribute photographs on a regular basis to the Forverts. Most of his photographic archive was lost during the Holocaust. Kacyzne was murdered by Ukrainians in July 1941.