Archiving and Identifying Prewar and Wartime Jewish Photographs in Polish Digital
Archives and Research Centers
Marek Sroka
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Introduction
Prewar and wartime photographs of Polish Jews are historical documents that bear witness to the vanished Jewish communities in Poland. Works by prominent Jewish photographers such as
Roman Vishniac are today among the most familiar images of East European Jewish life in the
1930s. Although these pictures were the product of a small part of Vishniac’s occupation, as he specialized in scientific photography, they remain his best-known accomplishment.
1
In addition to the photographs taken by Jewish photographers, there are collections of pictures of Polish
Jews taken by private individuals as well as government officials. These include newspapers, newsreels, and photographs commissioned by government agencies. Finally, there are photographs taken during the Holocaust that recorded “an event of unique dimensions.” 2
In the case of Jewish eyewitness-photographers, they constitute a personal testimony of “Doomed
Photographers.” 3
Disclosure of official materials pertaining to World War II and opening of
Eastern European state and private archives and collections may lead to the discovery of more pictures of Polish Jews from the 1930s and 1940s. That was the case with the travelling exhibition, “And I Still See Their Faces: Images of Polish Jews,” which first opened in Warsaw in 1996.
In 1994 the Shalom Foundation for the Promotion of Polish-Jewish Culture issued an appeal on Polish television and in the press asking for old photographs of Polish Jews. The

2 response was remarkable and stunned the Shalom Foundation organizers. Out of 8,000 photographs sent in mainly by non-Jewish Poles, 450 were selected for the exhibition. The photographs ranged from studio portraits to snapshots of everyday life and the interest generated by the exhibition demonstrated “the many conflicting and highly charged levels of attraction, tension, and memory concerning Jews” in Poland.
4
Many of the people in the photographs were anonymous: their names and fates long forgotten. Others were well-documented and often telling heartrending stories.
5
The exhibition led to the uncovering and publication of previously unknown photographs and their inadvertent preservation. It also highlighted undiscovered collections of photographs owned by non-Jewish Poles or taken by gentile photographers.
6
In recent years, some Polish archives and research institutes have begun digitizing their photography collections, including prewar and wartime photographs of Polish Jews and their communities. National Digital Archive ( Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, NAC ) in Warsaw has approximately 15 million photographs from the 20th century, including prewar and wartime
Poland. So far, about 150,000 photographs have been digitized (scanned) and are available online for viewing. The KARTA Center (
Ośrodek KARTA)
that mostly documents modern
Polish history has also digitized some photography collections, including unique wartime photographs from the Warsaw ghetto. Before discussing those collections, it is worth examining other projects involving digitization of Jewish photographs and a remarkable growth of Jewish digital archives and repositories.
Digital Repositories of Jewish Photographs
The concept of a digital repository is still evolving, but for the purpose of this study, a repository is defined as an online database of digital (those that are born digital) or digitized (those that are

digitized from an analogue original) objects designed to collect, organize, preserve and share those items with local and global communities.
7
There are numerous projects in different stages
3 of development dealing with the digitization of historical documents and artifacts, including photographs, chronicling places related to Jewish history as well as the Jews often in a crosscultural setting.
One of the most interesting Jewish photograph projects involves the development of a digital repository of photographic images, maps, postcards, and other texts related to the Holy
Land at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries in partnership with the National Library of
Israel.
8
A significant part of the digitized images will come from the Lenkin Family Collection of Photography, which contains some 4,000 photographs primarily of Ottoman Palestine taken between 1850 and 1947.
9 Another goal is the creation of digital tools to facilitate scholarly research and discovery across various digital collections, which, “while geographically dispersed, will become digitally united.”
10
The project that is already well-developed and can be used as a model for other digital repositories involves photograph archive of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles.
11
The archive documents the history from 1941 to the present of the University of Judaism and the
Brandeis-Bardin Institute which merged to become American Jewish University in 2007. The goal of the digital collection, which includes photographs, scrapbooks, and ephemera, is to provide “broader access to the cultural and social history of the Jewish community of the Great
Los Angeles area.” 12
The online collection includes 189 digitized photographs. Each image has a detailed information, including categories such as: title, subject, and description, which makes it searchable and retrievable not only within the archive (on the archive’s Web site), but also through Google searches.
13
The question of access to digital collections will be further

discussed.
The digital collections at the Center for Jewish History include rare objects such as 150 lantern slides (or glass transparencies) as well as 32,141 regular snapshots (or photographs).
14
There is the associated site about the collection on the photo sharing services and image website-
Flickr ( http://www.flickr.com
). In general, every photograph or group of photographs that is digitized is accompanied by appropriate metadata, including subject terms. The authorship of
4 the photographs and their subject identification (e.g. people or places) can be enhanced by allowing participatory practices by virtual users to create supplementary content (description or
“tagging”) of digital objects. Flickr tags include already assigned subject terms; additional tags can be added by users. By including its digitized photographs in a popular image and video hosting website such as Flickr, the Center for Jewish History has provided even more open access to its collections and has invited an online community to participate in the identification process of digitized objects that have been only partially described.
15
Finally, there are interesting collections of digitized photographs at the University of Haifa, including aerial photos from 1917-1919; YIVO Institute for Jewish Studies, including the collection of 17,000 photographs called “People of a Thousand Towns.” 16 The collection “constitutes a visual record of thousands of pre-World War II Jewish communities in Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine,
Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia” from the late 19th century to the early
1940s.
17
Last but not least, the Photo Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum includes 85,000 historical photographs, of which approximately 20% are available through the Museum’s online catalog, and Yad Vashem Photo Archive contains 138,327 digitized historical photographs.
18
The Photo Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum spans the period from the end of World War I to the early 1950s and covers various

subjects, including Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, the Holocaust, and the displaced
5 persons camps.
19
The Photo Archives online catalog allows the user to search for images using a keyword, phrase, personal name or geographic location.
20
The impressive collection of photographs of Central and Eastern European Jews, including family photographs, from Yad
Vashem Photo Archive can be retrieved through Google searches, which make it accessible to a global community of online users.
Notwithstanding that the projects described above are in various stages of development, they enhance the relevance of historical visual documentation and offer educational tools for scholars as well as the general public. There are still some little known and undiscovered collections of photographs in Central and Eastern European countries that can inform the historical record of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Recent digitization of some collections in
Poland may help to partially fill the gap.
Digital Collections of Jewish Photographs in Polish Archives and Portals Devoted to Jewish
History
On June 16, 2009, the Virtual Shtetl-a portal devoted to local Jewish history in contemporary and prewar Poland-went online.
21
The portal is designed to explore the history of Polish Jews living outside of major cities and will be “an indispensable supplement” to the future Museum of the
History of Polish Jews.
22
There are currently 1,933 entries for little towns in postwar and prewar
Poland that explore their Jewish cultural heritage.
23 Each entry includes contemporary and historical photographs representing local architecture and in some cases Jewish life associated with a particular town. At the beginning of 2011 the portal had over 53,000 photographs with new images being added almost daily. Users can add or edit the description of photographs and

6 upload their own photographs pertaining to a particular town.
24
The photographs from the
Virtual Shtetl have brief descriptions (tags) and can be retrieved through Google searches.
25
Some photographs come from the collection of the National Digital Archive ( Narodowe
Archiwum Cyfrowe, NAC ) in Warsaw.
26
The NAC collection of images includes approximately 15 million photographs taken between 1840s and the present. The photographs come from various sources, including Polish newspapers, prewar and postwar press agencies, private collections as well as official or propaganda type photographs produced by Communist or Nazi propaganda machines.
27
So far,
140,605 photographs have been digitized, mostly from 1910 to 1949.
28
The Judaica ( Judaika ) collection includes photographs from 1920s and 1930s as well as some images from the
Holocaust. The photographs can be divided into four major categories: architecture, everyday life, festivals and feasts, and the Holocaust. There are also images that can be characterized as studio photographs or portraits ( fotografia portretowa ).
29
The photographs showing Polish Jews in the Nazi-occupied Poland include some images from the archive of Stefan Bałuk as well as the
Nazi press agency, Zeitungsverlag Krakau-Warschau .
30
Parts of the Judaica collections have been digitized and can be viewed online and retrieved through Google searches.
The KARTA Center (
Ośrodek KARTA)
documents modern Polish history, especially
Polish democratic opposition from the 1970s to 1990 as well as the history of Poles in Poland’s prewar borderlands ( kresy ).
31
The collection of wartime photographs, among other things, includes some unique photographs of the Warsaw ghetto taken in June 1941. The photographs belonged to the German general Hellmuth Bieneck and were discovered in the 1990s stashed away in the attic of a house in Poznań.
32
The photographs have brief descriptions and can be retrieved through Google searches.

7
The future Museum of the History of Polish Jews has a small number of digitized documents and photographs displayed on its website, including a page of Emanuel Ringelblum’s notes and the photograph of the burning Warsaw ghetto.
33
The digitized images have only brief titles and no descriptions.
Finally, 454 photographs from the aforementioned exhibition, “And I Still See Their
Faces: Images of Polish Jews,” have been digitized and can be viewed as a virtual exhibit at the
Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance and its Online Multimedia Learning Center.
34
Another virtual exhibit that includes some digitized photographs is entitled, “Dignity and
Defiance.” The exhibit commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and includes articles, original documents, and images of the Warsaw ghetto.
35
Access to Online Collections of Photographs
Each portal or website seems to have a different way of organizing its digital collections, which requires varying search strategies. The photographs as well as other documents in the Virtual
Shtetl are collocated according to their geographical pertinence. Consequently, each entry (for a city, town, or village) includes the collection of new or digitized photographs related to it.
36
Users can also look at a sample of “popular” photographs in the online gallery and the most recent additions to the online photo collection.
37
The Virtual Shtetl is a unique concept because it is trying, to paraphrase the title of Ruth Ellen Gruber’s book, to virtually reinvent Jewish culture, customs, and history in “cities without Jews” or few Jews.
38
The NAC and KARTA Center collections of digitized photographs pertaining to Jewish topics constitute sub-group of more general collections and they are not listed under a separate category such as “Judaica” or “Jewish collection.” The NAC collections of photographs are

organized in a more or less chronological order that includes categories such as the beginning of
8 the 20th century, World War I, Poland’s interwar period, World War II, Communist Poland, etc.
39
Since the online collection does not list a separate sub-group of digitized Jewish photographs, they have to be searched within an online collection (database) of over 140,000 photographs using a simple or advanced search query.
40
The KARTA Center images pertaining to Jewish topics have been identified as part of the larger collection of the photographs of
German general Hellmuth Bieneck and they can be searched within this more general collection.
41
Identification and Subject Analysis of Photographs through Tagging
The authorship of photographs and their subject identification (e.g. people or places) can be enhanced by allowing participatory practices by online users to create supplementary content
(description or “tagging”) of digital assets. Social or collaborative tagging involves “the common indexing of objects from a free-subject catalog.”
42
In other words, users are not restricted when adding metadata in the form of keywords to shared content.
43 In recent years, collaborative (social) tagging has grown in popularity, especially on websites that allow users to tag bookmarks, blog posts, book reviews, photographs, and video clips. The free-subject nature of tagging allows nearly any member of a global Internet community to apply tags “without the need for an understanding of the sometimes challenging aspects of controlled vocabulary.” 44
Traditional indexing tools and cataloging systems assume the top-down approach to indexing in which a trained professional is responsible for assigning controlled vocabulary terms. The latter are referred to as controlled terms because they “designate a preferred form for each concept, person, and entity represented” and serve as a source of standardized forms of “names, terms, or

9 titles for a particular application, discipline, or domain.” 45
A relatively recent trend in the description of photographs and other visual materials through collaborative (social) tagging, prevalent on photo sharing services and image websites such as Flickr, is reflected in the so-called “folksonomy,” which is the conglomeration of concepts represented by tags.
46
The main goal, or the biggest hope, of using non-standard and unstructured terminology in the description of visual materials is to enhance access to various collections of images such as digitized photographs. Flickr is one of the most popular online photo management and sharing applications that allows extensive collaborative (social) tagging; each user can assign up to 75 tags to each photo or video.
47
Still, it is considered mostly a popular social medium or a trend in online resources rather than a serious research website.
48
Nevertheless, there are already advanced and scholarly projects underway that use social tagging to enhance access to images of works of art.
The museum social tagging project “steve” is a collaboration of museum professionals and others who are of the opinion that “social tagging may provide profound new ways to describe and access cultural heritage collections.”
49
The authors of the project also believe that it may encourage visitor engagement with collection objects.
50 The project’s website includes “the steve tagger,” a virtual place where users can describe various museum collections by applying keywords, or tags, to objects.
51
Currently, twenty-one institutions participate in the project, including Minnesota Digital Library with its collection of digitized photographs. Another goal of the project is to implement steve tagging software in various museums’ websites (or in their galleries).
Any collaborative or social tagging model that is used to enhance access to digital collections is not free from controversy. Given the lack of controlled terminology and absence

10 of hierarchical structure of standardized vocabulary terms, the practice of social tagging may result in the confusion of similar terms and the application of inadequate descriptors. The unstructured nature of tagging and practically no formal requirements for their application may lead to descriptions that tend to be general and vague and lacking depth and precision necessary for finding the most relevant objects. Since anybody can be a tagging expert, there is a real danger of providing by accident or intentionally incorrect information. Another concern is that in the environment where online users are able to freely apply tags, inappropriate or offensive terms such as anti-Semitic or racial slurs might appear in descriptions of images. Finally, it may be difficult to motivate users to participate in collaborative tagging. Consequently, it may lead to the formation of relatively small and isolated, if not closed to the outsiders, communities of dedicated, but single-minded “taggers.” These are the risks associated with the rapid growth of
Web 2.0 social-networking environments, but they can be offset by tremendous opportunities for incorporating user-generated content such as tags into the process of adding more value to traditional indexing schema. Some scholars have suggested that collaborative tagging should be considered as a parallel and value-added process that could be linked to more highly structured, standard vocabulary rather than the one designed to replace traditional thesauri and the process of professional cataloging and indexing.
52
Collaborative tagging has the potential for enhancing user access and will most likely become a useful addition to the existing practices of standard indexing.
Images of the Holocaust
In addition to a small number of photographs documenting the Holocaust taken by victims, bystanders, and liberators, a large number of images of the Holocaust were taken by Nazi

11 propaganda teams and Nazi press agencies. Some digitized collections of such photographs that have been discussed here include the images taken by the Nazi press agency, Zeitungsverlag
Krakau-Warschau , and the items from the photo album of German general Hellmuth Bieneck.
The question is how one should read such images and how they can be used as historical evidence. Images such as the photographs of smiling Jewish boys selling cigarettes in the
Warsaw ghetto, a seemingly happy Jewish boy selling armbands with the Star of David, or elderly Jews having a friendly conversation in front of a newsstand, present what Sybil Milton characterized as “a veneer of deceptive normality.” 53
No German soldiers are visible and none of their incriminating activities are recorded.
54
Nevertheless, such photographs are a form of historical data that need to be analyzed.
Ulrich Keller, editor of the collection of 206 photographs of the Warsaw ghetto from
1941, provides an excellent overview and analysis of the images of Nazi propaganda units in
Warsaw and Łódź.
55
The images were made by members of a German Propaganda-Kompanie and they essentially present “an outside view of the Warsaw ghetto,” as opposed to an inside documentation of the life in the Łódź ghetto captured by a clandestine Jewish photographer
Mendel Grossman.
56 Even though the images of the Warsaw ghetto were taken by members of a
Nazi propaganda unit, the photographs are mostly neutral in tone, which make them “eminently readable” and probably acceptable for present-day research.
57
Keller argues that considering the significance of the actual picture content, the images from the Warsaw ghetto represent “an indelible and inexhaustible document of the crime of the Holocaust,” even if the photographers did not admit that what they had been witnessing was a crime.
58 They are visual records of the crime of the Holocaust and should be considered historical evidence. Interestingly, a recently published collection of 268 photographs from the Łódź ghetto (
Litzmannstadt Getto ) includes

12 images from many different authors and sources.
59
In addition to famous photographs by
Mendel Grossman, there are images made by other Jewish photographers such as Lajb Maliniak and Henryk Ross as well as Nazi officials such as Walter Genewein who documented the official events of the Łódź ghetto using color slides.
60 The editors of the photo album, published by the
State Archive in Łódź, believe that even official or propaganda images could tell as more than their original authors realized. Therefore, the photographs represent significant document of the
Holocaust.
Photographs found in NAC and KARTA Center collections, including the images taken by propaganda operators, are likewise significant documents that can be used by historians today.
Conclusion
Digitization of various photograph collections opens them to the widest possible Internet audience and has provided opportunities for a closer reading of the past. There is worldwide interest in Jewish photographs, including images of Polish Jews. Although digitized collections of Jewish photographs in Polish digital archives and repositories constitute a relatively small part of the state and private holdings of Jewish photographs in Poland, their value for teaching and research purposes should not be underestimated. Each portal or website seems to have a different way of organizing its digital collections, which requires different search strategies. For example, the images that can be viewed at the Virtual Shtetl are collocated according to their geographical pertinence. The NAC and KARTA Center collections of digitized photographs pertaining to Jewish topics constitute sub-group of more general collections and they are not listed under a separate category such as “Judaica” or “Jewish collection.” Over 450 digitized

photographs from the exhibition, “And I Still See Their Faces: Images of Polish Jews,” can be accessed as a virtual exhibit at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance and its
13
Online Multimedia Learning Center.
The authorship of photographs and their subject identification such as names of people or places presents a big challenge. The problem is especially acute with respect to portrait/studio or group photographs.
61
It can be alleviated by allowing virtual users to create supplementary content (description or “tagging”) of digital objects. Although collaborative (social) tagging has grown in popularity, especially on websites that allow users to tag bookmarks, blog posts, book reviews, photographs, and video clips, the practice is somehow controversial given its unrestricted nature and the lack of controlled terminology and hierarchical structure associated with traditional indexing schema. The Virtual Shetl portal is the most “user-friendly” allowing virtual viewers to add or edit the description of photographs and upload their own photographs pertaining to a particular town (“shtetl”). The photographs from the Virtual Shtetl have brief descriptions (tags) and can be retrieved through Google searches. They can also be edited on photo sharing services and image websites such as Flickr.
Finally, the role of Nazi documentary photography created by various propaganda units and accredited German photographers working in front-line propaganda requires more research as some of their output is being digitized. Such photographs represent historical evidence of the crime of the Holocaust and constitute a large part of the rich world of the photographic heritage of the Holocaust.
62
Nonetheless, they make us uneasy because of their authorship and dubious and perverted purpose they served.
It is to be hoped that with the explosion of social media and the advancement of digital technology more digitized collections of Jewish photographs will become available to anybody

14 interested in Jewish culture and history. One of the major goals of the digitization of various collections should be their virtual unification and the development of digital tools allowing for the comparison of the images not only within a particular collection, but also among other, similar collections worldwide.
63 Subject-specific digitized collections can bring together dispersed photographs and provide new insights into the historical importance of visual culture, and the impact it has already had on Jewish studies.
1
Jeffrey Shandler, “The Time of Vishniac”: Photographs of Pre-War East European Jewry in Post-War
Contexts, Polin 16 (2003): 313-333.
Roman Vishniac, Polish Jews: A Pictorial Record (New York: Schocken Books, 1947).
Roman Vishniac, A Vanished World (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983).
2 Peter Pollack and Yeshayahu Nir, Photography, in Michael Berenbaum, ed., Encyclopaedia Judaica vol.
16 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007) 125-131.
3 Ibid., 130.
4 Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) 58.
5 Golda Tencer, And I Still See Their Faces: Images of Polish Jews (Warszawa: Amerykańsko-Polsko-
Izraelska Fundacja “Shalom,” 1996).
6 Yeshayahu Nir proposes a broader perspective of “Camera Judaica” that would include gentile photographers who “feel affinity toward Judaism and Jewish culture.” See Pollack and Nir, Photography, in Berenbaum, ed., Encyclopaedia Judaica , 131.
7 James E.P. Currall and Michael S. Moss, Digital Asset Management, in Marcia J. Bates, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences: Third Edition (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2010)
1530-31.

15
See also, Joseph Branin, Institutional Repositories, in Marcia J. Bates, ed., Encyclopedia of Library and
Information Sciences: Third Edition (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2010) 2785.
8 I am grateful to Arthur Kiron, Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator of Judaica Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, for supplying information about the project.
9 For background about the project, see: http://www.library.upenn.edu/docs/publications/ivyleaves/09fallivyleaves.pdf
(accessed January 25,
2011).
10 Ibid. For a sample selection of digitized images from the Lenkin Family Collection of Photographs, see: http://staffweb.library.upenn.edu/~zucca/lenkin/content/index.html
(accessed January 25, 2011).
11 American Jewish University Los Angeles Photograph Archive: http://callimachus.org/ajula/ (accessed
January 27, 2011). I am grateful to Jackie Ben-Efraim, Special Collections Librarian at the American
Jewish University, and Frances Loera for pointing me to this project.
12 http://callimachus.org/ajula/ (accessed January 27, 2011).
13 For example, one photograph depicts a woman identified as Molly Fligelman in the adult education art class. A simple Google search “Molly Fligelman American Jewish University” will retrieve her photograph from the archive. See: http://callimachus.org/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/p15008coll8
(accessed January 27, 2011).
14 For examples of digitized glass transparencies, see: http://digital.cjh.org/R/?func=collections-result&collection_id=1772 (accessed January 31, 2011)
For examples of other digital collections, see: http://digital.cjh.org/R/2GPHIEK6R7CPXGLU6DKB8PX9FPN5AKQ6LU619XMUDEM9G3H699-
05647?func=collections-result&collection_id=1010 (accessed January 31, 2011)
For examples of the digital collections of Flickr, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/center_for_jewish_history/ (accessed January 31, 2011)
15 I am grateful to Susan Woodland, Director of Hadassah Archives, for supplying information about the project.
16 For the University of Haifa collections of digitized photographs, see: http://digitool.haifa.ac.il/R/REP8TR3TVR6MQ5JD1UQ3ME5T1GN3L8ERBYFPF2TP5H2V5FL3LV-
01355?func=search (accessed January 31, 2011)
Online albums of photographs at YIVO: http://yivo1000towns.cjh.org/main.asp
(accessed January 31,
2011)

16
17 “About the Catalog,” see: http://yivo1000towns.cjh.org/1000coll.asp
(accessed January 31, 2011)
18 “ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives,” see: http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/photo/ (accessed January 31, 2011)
“Yad Vashem Photo Archive,” see: http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive (accessed January 31,
2011)
19 http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/photo/ (accessed January 31, 2011)
20
“Photo Archives Online Catalog,” see: http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/photoarchives/ (accessed January
31, 2011)
21 Paweł Brylski, “Virtual Shtetl Portal Goes On-line,” Museum of the History of Polish Jews Newsletter
(Summer 09): 8-9. “Wirtualny sztetl,” see: http://www.sztetl.org.pl/ (accessed February 1, 2011)
22 Ibid.
23 The post-World II changes to Poland’s borders resulted in a considerable and often forced resettlement of German, Polish, and Ukrainian populations and an almost homogeneous ethnic composition of postwar Poland.
24 Login is required.
25 There is no need to type Polish diacritical marks.
26 For example, see the photograph of a Jewish street vendor in the Jewish quarter in Warsaw, circa 1927: http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/image/6522/ (accessed February 8, 2011) http://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualshtetl/4149380141/ (accessed February 8, 2011)
27
“Fotografie Narodowego Archiwum Cyfrowego (Photographs of the National Digital Archive),” see: http://www.nac.gov.pl/files/NAC_ulotka_0.pdf
(accessed February 7, 2011)
28
“NAC-Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (NAC-National Digital Archive),” see: http://www.nac.gov.pl/
(accessed February 7, 2011)
29 For example, see the photograph of Aron Lewin, a member of the Polish parliament: http://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/25612/5b43b5b09479997e0878bbee75343457/ (accessed February 7,
2011)
30
“Archiwum fotograficzne Stefana Bałuka (Photo Archive of Stefan Bałuk),” see: http://www.nac.gov.pl/pl/afbaluka (accessed February 7, 2011)
“Zeitungsverlag Krakau-Warschau,” see: http://www.nac.gov.pl/pl/wpkw (accessed February 7, 2011)

17
31 “Ośrodek Karta (Karta Center),” see: http://www.karta.org.pl
(accessed February 7, 2011), “Archiwum
Wschodnie (Eastern Archive),” see: http://www.karta.org.pl/archiwa_i_bazy_danych/Archiwum_Wschodnie/51 (accessed February 7, 2011)
32 “Fotografie z albumu generała Hellmutha Bienecka (Photographs from the photo album of general
Hellmuth Bieneck),” see: http://starakarta.karta.org.pl/foto/fotokolekcje/Bieneck/index.htm
(accessed
February 7, 2011)
33 “Museum of the History of Polish Jews Multimedia Photos,” see: http://www.jewishmuseum.org.pl/en/cms/multimedia/ (accessed February 7, 2011)
34 “And I Still See Their Faces: Images of Polish Jews,” see: http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.aspx?c=jmKYJeNVJrF&b=478527 (accessed February 10, 2011)
For individual pictures, see: http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=jmKYJeNVJrF&b=478567
(accessed February 10, 2011)
35 “Dignity and Defiance,” see: http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.aspx?c=ivKVLcMVIsG&b=476119
(accessed February 10, 2011)
36 For example, see the entry for the city of Wrocław and the photographs related to it at “Galeria
(Gallery)”: http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/city/wroclaw/ (accessed February 8, 2011)
37 “Galeria Popularne (Gallery Popular Photos); Najnowsze materiały zdjęcia (The Latest Additions
Photographs),” see: http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/gallery2/ (accessed February 8, 2011)
38 Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002). See the first chapter, “Cities without Jews.”
39
“Photographs,” see: http://www.nac.gov.pl/en/photographs (accessed February 8, 2011)
40
“Zbiory NAC on-line (NAC Online Collections),” see: http://www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl/ (accessed
February 8, 2011
“Formularz wyszukiwania zaawansowanego (Advanced Search Query),” see: http://www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl/search/advanced/ (accessed February 8, 2011
41
“Fotografie z albumu generała Hellmutha Bienecka (Photographs from the photo album of general
Hellmuth Bieneck),” see: http://starakarta.karta.org.pl/foto/fotokolekcje/Bieneck/index.htm
(accessed
February 7, 2011.) This is the collection of 122 digitized photographs. Since there is no search box
(option), one has to go through the whole collection to find a relevant image.
42 Stefanie Panke and Brigit Gaiser, “With My Head Up in the Clouds”: Using Social Tagging to Organize
Knowledge, Journal of Business and Technical Communication 23(3) (2009): 318.

18
43 For the explanation of different types and functions of metadata and domain-specific definitions for metadata, see the citation below. In the social networking and web 2.0 environments the term
“tag/tags/tagging” is used instead of metadata to “underscore the functional aspects of “tags” as keywords for describing, classifying, finding, and sharing information.” See, Jane Greenberg, Metadata and Digital
Information, in Marcia J. Bates, ed., Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences: Third Edition
(Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2010) 3611-12.
44 Scott McFadden and Jenna Venker Weidenbenner, Collaborative Tagging: Traditional Cataloging
Meets the “Wisdom of Crowds,”
The Serials Librarian 58 (2010): 56.
45 Murtha Baca, Controlled Vocabularies for Art, Architecture, and Material Culture, in Marcia J. Bates, ed., Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences: Third Edition (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press,
2010) 1277.
46 Ibid., 1280.
47 For example, see Flickr’s “all time most popular tags” at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ (accessed
February 12, 2011)
48 That does not mean that Flickr does not have the potential for developing enhanced user access to scholarly collections of images that may be shared on its website.
49 “Steve: the Museum Social Tagging Project,” see: http://www.steve.museum/ (accessed February 12,
2011)
50 Ibid.
51 “The Steve Tagger,” see: http://tagger.steve.museum/ (accessed February 12, 2011)
52 McFadden and Weidenbenner, Collaborative Tagging: Traditional Cataloging Meets the “Wisdom of
Crowds,” 57.
Baca, Controlled Vocabularies for Art, Architecture, and Material Culture, 1280.
53 Sybil Milton, Images of the Holocaust-Part II, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1(2) (1986): 193.
See photographs OK_002813 and OK_002814 at: http://starakarta.karta.org.pl/foto/fotokolekcje/Bieneck/index.htm
(accessed February 15, 2011)
See photograph 2-6146 at: http://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/7771/2bc3baeb83ea028f23361f6faefa4a86/
(accessed February 15, 2011)
54 Some NAC digitized images show German soldiers humiliating religious Jews. The authorship of the photographs is unknown, but considering their staged and posed character they must have been taken by
Nazi officials. For example, see the picture of German soldiers cutting the beard of a rabbi’s son at:

19 http://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/119188:1/ddfec813a545219a6f3049b661db6279/ (accessed February 15,
2011)
55 Ulrich Keller, The Warsaw Ghetto in Photographs: 206 Views Made in 1941 (New York: Dover
Publications, 1984)
56 Ibid., xx.
See also, Mendel Grossman, With a Camera in the Ghetto (New York: Schocken Books, 1977)
57 Keller, The Warsaw Ghetto in Photographs , xx.
58 Ibid., xxi.
59 Julian Baranowski and Sławomir M. Nowinowski, eds., Getto Łódzkie=Litzmannstadt Getto: 1940-
1944 (Łódź: Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, 2009). It is estimated that there are approximately 20,000 official (created by Nazi propaganda units and individuals) and unofficial photographs pertaining to the
Łódź ghetto.
60 Ibid., 5, 268. Genewein worked in the financial department of the ghetto administration.
61 For example, see the photograph of an unidentified Jew from Białystok at: http://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/125412/c0f41dca522778a4d279e1d406a3fe3e/ (accessed February 15,
2011)
Many photographs from the exhibition, “And I Still See Their Faces: Images of Polish Jews,” remain unidentified. Many pictures include an appeal for recognition: “Maybe someone somewhere will recognize me.” See picture 9 at: http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=jmKYJeNVJrF&b=478583
(accessed February 15, 2011)
62 Milton, Images of the Holocaust-Part II, 214.
63 For example, the photo album,
Getto Łódzkie=Litzmannstadt Getto
, includes photographs from seven different institutions, including Polish, German, and American archives and museums.