Libivners unit and remember

Life for the Jews of Europe during World War Two is well documented. Less well-known is whatlife was like before the Holocaust.

A major exhibition from America has just opened in London, telling the story of this vanished world and in particular that of the Polish shtetl (market town) of Luboml.

Luboml (Libivne in Yiddish) was a market town about 200 miles southeast of Warsaw which dated back to the 11th Century. Along with Chelm and Belz, it formed part of the Eastern European region of Volhynia, which shared a border with Lithuania to the north, Russia to the east and Poland to the west.

In 1939, the Germans occupied Luboml, but by agreement with the Soviet Union the region was turned over to Soviet control until 1941 when the Germans reoccupied the town.

The story of Luboml is like the story of so many European Jewish communities. Until as late as 1940, the town was a prosperous shtetl which had a population of more than 5,000, ninety percent of whom were Jewish. Yet by the time the Soviet Red Army liberated Luboml in 1945 only 51 Jews from the townhad survived the Holocaust. More than 1,000 had died in one act alone, a mass execution on 1 October 1942. The German liquidation of the town effectively ended six-centuries of history and presence of Jewish life there.

Luboml was not a conspicuous place. It didn't have an important river and no one famous came from there. So why a whole exhibition devoted to remembering the town? One Libivner who emigrated to the United States in 1938 as a nine-year-old boy felt compelled to remember his heritage and brought this project, which consists of a collection of nearly 2,000 photographs and artifacts from more than 100 families, alive.

The exhibition contains many surprises for a generation brought up on the film Fiddler On The Roof. Between the wars Luboml emerged rapidly from its insular existence and the contrast of the modern and traditional worlds is depicted vividly in photos of bearded Hasidic scholars (just like those with whom Tevye consulted in the film) and girls in fashionable culottes riding bicycles in the park. There is also rare footage of life in the town taken by an American tourist in 1933 and artifacts that were hastily buried when the Germans came.

Remembering Luboml: Images of a Jewish Community, The Jewish Museum, 129-131 Albert Street, Camden Town,London NW1 7NB (020 7284 1997, www.jewmusm.ort.org)

Open: Sunday 10.00am-5.00pm, Monday to Thursday 10.00am-4.00pm. Closed Friday, Saturday, Public Holidays and Jewish Festivals

Admission: £3.50, Senior Citizens £2.50, Children/Students/disabled £1.50