[Chaim Simcha Mechlowitz, a farmer and tanner, Vysni Apsa, Carpathian Ruthenia]

In March 1944, Germany seized control of Hungary and began transporting the Jewish population of Carpathian Ruthenia, including Chaim Mechlowitz, his wife Etel, and eight of their children, to Auschwitz. Chaim, Etel, and all but one of their children were killed there. Four of Mechlowitz’s children from his first marriage survived the war. Chaim’s granddaughter recently donated photographs of Mechlowitz and his family, made around the time that Vishniac took his iconic images of the farmer, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Portraits of Nettie Stub, David Eckstien, and Chaim Mechlowitz are among more than two dozen subjects of Vishniac’s photographs to be identified and interviewed by ICP. As the number of living survivors of the Holocaust dwindles, ICP’s efforts to identify individuals and communities documented by the photographer come at a critical time in preserving this history for future generations.
ICP Blog entry
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Vysni Apsa (formerly in Czechoslovakia, now Verkhnye Vodyane, Ukraine)