Born into a wealthy family of Warsaw bankers and merchants, Aleksander Lesser studied in Warsaw, Dresden, and Munich. He made his reputation as a painter of Polish historical and Christian religious subjects. In the 1860s, Lesser became one of the first artists to depict scenes from the history of Polish Jewry. He is most known for his painting of a contemporary event: The Funeral of the Five Victims shows a cross section of Polish society (Catholics, Protestants, and Jews) at the funeral for protesters who were shot by police during a patriotic demonstration in Warsaw on March 2, 1861.
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…
Cover of L’Ornement Hebreu (The Hebrew Ornament). This major work on Jewish art reproduced ornaments from medieval Hebrew illuminated manuscripts in the imperial library in St. Petersburg, Russia.
“Before and After the Reform.” Cartoon from Der schlemiel: Illustriertes jüdisches Blatt für Humor und Satire lampooning the transformation of a Hasidic Jew into a Reformed Jew.