I put up a lot of links about Israel and Zionism. Zionism didn't spring forth upon the world in an immaculate conception. The history of Zionism is tied up with the Askhenazi Jews of Europe. There are other Jewish groups but it's the Askhenazi that created Isreal and largely run it today. The Israeli Askhenazi are the remnants of the Yiddish Civilization of Europe, a civilization that was ending even before the Nazi death camps. Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation, by Paul Kriwaczek, is a history of the Yiddish Civilization beginning with the fall of Jerusalem. Kriwaczek mentioned the photographer Roman Vishniac and his heroic documentation of the end of a way of life as he photographed Jewish communiteies in Eastern Europe. My local library had two of Vishniac's books: A Vanished World and Children of a Vanished World

Yiddish Civilisation:
The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation
by Paul Kriwaczek

From amazon:

The Jews of Central and Eastern Europe may not have constituted a "nation" n the conventional sense because they lacked a central political authority and many of the other attributes of the modern nation-state. But they certainly were a civilization, with a common language, religion, and a myriad of shared cultural traits. Kriwaczek tracks the origins, flowering, and destruction of this unique, vibrant, and tenacious culture with a fine mixture of pride, regret, and eloquence. He begins with a haunting visit to the sites of several once-thriving Jewish communities whose current residents have virtually no memory of the Jewish past. Kriwaczek then proceeds with a chronological narrative, commencing with an interesting, often-surprising examination of Jewish centers in the Roman Empire north of the Mediterranean. He describes the gradual shift of Jewish life eastward after the slaughters of Jews in the Rhineland during the era of the Crusades. Out of this horror came the development of a rich culture centered upon religion and the Yiddish language. This is an outstanding survey of a civilization that endured against great odds but has now essentially vanished.

One of Kriwaczek's sources was the diary of Glikl bas Judah, 1647-1724.

Glikl bas Judah

The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln

Gluckel von Hameln /Glueckel /Glikl bas Judah Leib (1646-1724)

Excerpt from Memoirs by Glikl...

A Vanished World
by Roman Vishniac

From Amazon:

Roman Vishniac's A Vanished World is an extraordinary record of the lives of German and Eastern European Jews in the years immediately preceding the Holocaust. Vishniac, a Russian Jew, began to take photographs of village life during World War I, when Russian Jews who lived near the front were accused of being German spies and were deported to Siberia. He later moved to Germany, where he witnessed the horrible events of Kristallnacht and the anti-Jewish legislation that allowed Hitler to declare his enemies stateless and therefore unworthy of international protection. As we study Vishniac's photographs--a surviving fraction of the more than 16,000 he took--we are aware that we are seeing the faces of those soon to die, witnessing a world that has all but perished. Yet that world, of shops and schools, of busy streets and quiet farms, remains with us if only as a ghostly memory, thanks in part to Vishniac's compassionate eye.

Children of a Vanished World
by Roman Vishniac

Pictures of children, some of which appeared in A Vanished World.

Roman Vishniac
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roman Vishniac ['vɪʃnięk] (Russian: Роман Вишняк; August 19, 1897 – January 22, 1990) was a renowned Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust.

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Roman Vishniac Collection

A distinguished Talmudist. Kazimierz, Cracow

This has 78 of Vishnac's photographs. Amazing!