FEATURE
Feature The Radin Community, Poland

These photographs, which are part of the rich Radin Community Collection, housed at the Dolf Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin, document daily life in pre-World War II Radin, Poland. This collection constitutes perhaps the largest set of photographs of any one village in pre-war Europe. Additionally the collection contains an assortment of audio cassette tapes, research files, correspondence, news clippings, periodicals and collected publications in Yiddish and English documenting the Jewish community in Radin before the war and during the Nazi occupation and decimation of the town.

Prior to World War II, Radin was a farming village with a sizeable population of Yiddish-speaking Jews. The town was widely known for its Yeshiva, founded in 1869 by Rabbi Israel Meir ha-Kohen, the Chofetz Chaim. In 1941, the Nazis occupied the town and established a Jewish ghetto. A slaughter of the Jewish community took place in 1942. The Jewish community of Radin was not reconstituted after the war.

In the 1970s, Dr. Frank Kasman obtained a set of glass lantern slides taken prior to 1933, documenting daily life in Radin. Dr. Kasman conducted extensive research on the village, located survivors and immigrants from Radin, and gathered oral history interviews. Collected here is a selection of photographs from this fascinating collection.

Feature View Selection of Photos from Collection [view]