The Glass Plates of Lublin

The Glass Plates of Lublin features selections from the 2,700 glass photographic plates discovered in the attic of a nineteenth-century apartment building in the former Jewish section of Lublin, Poland. Taken between 1913 and 1930, they capture the teeming life of Lublin before the war, at a time when Jews composed a third of the city's population. The images include Jews and Poles, children and the elderly, young lovers, workers, athletes, and everyday people who posed for a camera long ago never dreaming that their portraits would one day be of interest to anyone. Unearthed in 2010, the plates have been restored and are now exhibited at the Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre Centre in Lublin, where curator Piotr Nazaruk and his staff continue to work assiduously to identify their subjects and solve the mystery of the photographer who took them. For centuries Lublin was home to one of Europe's most distinguished Jewish communities. These portraits, which date from around 1913 to the 1930s, showcase the diversity of the city and its Jewish community. In them we see signs of different political parties and members of various social classes; the construction and opening of the Yeshivat Chochmei Lublin, soon to be the largest yeshiva (Talmudic academy) in the world; and groups of left-wing and secular Jewish youngsters, such as members of Bund-affiliated youth groups. The images show the changes in prewar fashions, which reflect increasing Jewish secularization. Many of the pictures were taken in the Saxon Garden, Lublin's "Central Park", and in the nearby villages and towns of Nowodwr, Motycz, and Na??czw, where Lublin residents used to go for vacation. In the years since this remarkable find, the collection has been thoroughly researched and analyzed. For years, no connection could be made between any known photographer and the negatives. In 2015, Jakub Chmielewski, then an associate of the Center and currently a researcher at the State Museum at Majdanek, discovered a new clue. In German documents from August 1940, he found an entry on the house at Rynek 4, along with the name "Abram Zylberberg" and the annotation "photographer". Chmielewski's discovery was the first, and still the only, serious indication of the negatives' authorship. The discovery was later confirmed when one of the plates was found bearing the signature "Photo Zylberberg. Lublin".