Herman

Rokiskis SIG member Ada Gamsu, of Johannesburg, South Africa, is related to the prominent Germanas family of professional photographers. She learned from another relative that in the first half of 2017 the Rokiškis Regional Museum (“RKM” or “museum”) had published an article about the family.[ii] The article also noted that a descendant of that family, Sara Mei Herman, is a professional photographer in Holland.[iii]

The family’s surname in the 19th Century most likely was Herman. However, since czarist-era records were written using the Russian Cyrillic, which replaces the letter “H” with the Cyrillic letter for “G,” the surname appeared in czarist-era records as “German.” In independent Lithuania (from 1918), all names were required to be “lituanized.” In this case, the Cyrillic surname “German” became “Germanas.” However, family members living outside of Lithuania have used the surname of Herman.

Thanks to Ada Gamsu, the RKM has given its permission to the Rokiskis SIG to translate the article into English [iv] and post the English translation on the SIG’s website. As a result of her efforts and those of Dutch photographer Sarah Mei Herman, who is the granddaughter of Mordechai Herman, we can read the English version of the article and see all the fascinating photos. And a special thank you to Aldona and Phil Shapiro for all their hard work on this project - Aldona for the translating from the Lithuanian and Phil for all his research, corrections, and erudite additions to the endnotes.

From Photography of the Past: The History of the Germanas Family

DALIA KIUKIENĖ
Rokiškis Regional Museum Deputy Director – Chief Custodian of Collections

When photography was invented in the first half of the 19th Century news of the invention quickly spread all over the world and even in Lithuania. In Rokiškis, as well as in other Lithuanian towns, most of the photographers were Jewish. This is confirmed by the books listing the names and numbers of telephone subscribers in Rokiškis. The photographers’ Jewish identity can be seen in the stamps on photographs that are part of the Museum’s collection. These photos show that there were a great many famous photographers who would take portraits in their studios using different background scenes. Separately, they took pictures of the environs of surrounding towns and villages and of buildings. They also traveled from their town to villages to capture the moments of various celebrations and occasions. Unfortunately, many pictures in the museum’s collection do not bear the stamps of photographers’ studios so their creators are not known.

Prior to the Second World War, the following photographers were known in Rokiškis: Ch. Shneidermanas, Leiba Vinokuras, F. Chonas, M. Germanas, and, in Pandėlys, O. Čadovičius.

The hotel Europa on the Nepriklausomybės aikštė (Independence Square). The Naujiena (Novelty) photographic studio operated on the ground floor of this building.

This photograph, made at the Naujiena studio, shows a market day in the Nepriklausomybės aikštė in the 1920’s.

There were two photographic studios on Nepriklausomybės aikštė (Independence Square),[v] namely, “Naujiena” (“Novelty”), at No. 18/5, and “Renesans” (“Renaissance”), at No. 24. The “Naujiena” (“Novelty”) studio belonged to Izaokas Klingmanas (Yitzchak Klingman). He sold cameras but also demonstrated to customers how to take photographs, including making samples of their initial efforts to take pictures. This firm also sold photographs of the town views. Several other businesses also operated in the hotel Europa building, namely, shops selling food, groceries, and industrial goods.

Mordechajus (Mordechai) Germanas’ photographic studio was located nearby, at No. 3 Respublikos (formerly, Kamai) street. Next to it, at No. 5 Respublikos street, was Leiba Vinokuras’ photographic studio. One more photographer, Jokūbas Skrinskas, often visited Rokiškis from Marijampolė.

A view of Respublikos (formerly, Kamai) street around 1931-1932.

There has been too little research of early photography in Rokiškis. The museum has only limited and fragmented archival material on photographers from the inter-war period, and the number of people who can remember that period is notably decreasing. When the Second World War began, some Jews departed,[vi] others were killed. Yad Vashem’s central database of the names of Sho’ah victims, https://yvng.yadvashem.org, lists as murdered these Rokiškis photographers: Vinokur (born 1886); Yitzchak Klingman; Yehuda (Yudel) and Solomon Herman (Germanas); Sara Finkel (born in 1906 in Rokiškis and lived in Utena); and Reizl Shneiderman from Rokiškis. The fates of Ch. Finkelis (Finkel) and Ch. Shneiderman are unknown but the Sara Finkel and Reizl Shneiderman mentioned on Yad Vashem’s website most likely were family members of these photographers.

In 2014 the Rokiškis Regional Museum published a catalog entitled, Rokiškis in Photographs 1914-1940. Within six months all 400 copies were sold and distributed. The research for and preparation of the publication became the start of a larger project to collect information about the Rokiškis region’s photographers. After the catalog was published, we collected data on two Rokiškis photographers - M. Germanas and J. Masiulis. Initially, little was known about the life of Germanas, except that his given name began with the letter “M.” That was soon to change.

Museum collections are publicized not only through print media, but also through the Internet. The museum uploaded to its digital library (the “LIMIS” system) a virtual exhibition of the photographs, which attracted not only the interest of Lithuanians, but also the interest of foreigners. One such foreigner was the Dutch professional photographer, Sara Mei Herman, the granddaughter of Rokiškis photographer Mordechai) Germanas (1901-1985). In 2015 (the year after the catalog was published) she came to Rokiškis and brought a collection of family photographs, most of which were created at the Germanas photo studio.[vii]

RKM deputy director Marijona Mieliauskienė (left, standing), Dutch photographer Sara Mei Herman (center), RKM deputy director and chief custodian of collections Dalia Kiukienė, and RKM director Nijolė Šniokienė (right, standing), at the Rokiškis Regional Museum, November 4, 2015.

And thus a project originally intended to bring to light several photographs in the museum’s collection grew into a study of the lives of one family of Jewish photographers. During the course of two years of correspondence, the fragments of the history of the Germanas family were brought together. It was learned that two brothers in this family were photographers, and we guess that one more brother may have been a photographer as well.


Reistel (Rosa) Germanas, 1930s (from Julian Herman's personal album).	Dovydas (David) Germanas (from Julian Herman's personal album).


Germanas family members, circa 1915. Front row, second from the left, Yudel; Second row, David and Bella; Back row, Yakov, Mordechai, Solomon, and Itzchak (from Julian Herman‘s album).	The Germanas brothers: Front row, left to right: Yudel andItzchak; Back row, left to right: Mordechai, Solomon, and Yakov. 1934. Photographer Germanas, Rokiškis (from Julian Herman's album).

At the end of the 19^th Century and the beginning of the 20^th Century Dovydas (David) and Reistel [probably Reizl] (Rosa) Germanas lived in Rokiškis. David worked as a sales agent. They had six children, specifically, five sons, Salamonas (Solomon), Isakas (Itzchak), Jakovas (Yakov), Mordechajus (Mordechai), and Judelis (Yudel), and a daughter Bela (Bella). There is no information about the daughter, only a few photographs have survived with her image. Most likely, she became a victim of the genocide.

At the beginning of the 1930s Rosa and David Germanas and their son Yudel moved to Kaunas (Kovna). Their names appear on a 1934 list of Kaunas city voters. In 1941 we can find the names of David and Rosa Germanas for the last time on an electoral district list that was compiled in 1940 in preparation for the elections of candidates to the USSR’s Supreme Soviet (the Soviet Union’s legislature). David and Rose were murdered in Kaunas in 1941.

Their sons, Solomon and Mordechai, stayed in Rokiškis for a short time. Itzchak, Yakov, and Mordechai emigrated before the war and thereby avoided the Holocaust. Yakov departed for Switzerland in the 1920s to study medicine. He became a psychiatrist and settled there.

In this photo of the directors of the Jewish Bank in Rokiškis, Solomon Germanas is in the third row, the first person on the left. Seated in the center is the chairman, Rabbi Avrom Meirowitz, the last rabbi of Abel / Obeliai.

The eldest son, Solomon (1895-1945), worked in the Jewish Bank in Rokiškis. He and his wife Roza Matz had two children: a son Michael (who was born in Rokiškis in 1928 and died in 2004 in New York) and a daughter Tonia (who was born in in Rokiškis in 1925 and died in Israel in 2019). Solomon Germanas’ family moved to Tauragė in the 1930s and later settled in Kaunas. Solomon was preparing for a new position as an accountant when the war began in Lithuania (in June 1941). Soon he and his parents were forced to live in the Kovna Ghetto. Later he was one of the captives who were sent to perform forced labor at the Spilve camp (near Riga, Latvia).

Solomon was separated from his family for three years. At the outbreak of the war in Lithuania his wife Roza and their two children fled to Šiauliai, where they were forced to live in that city’s ghetto. At the end of the summer of 1944 (as the Russian army approached the Baltic region), Solomon and the surviving captives were transferred back to Lithuania from Spilve. A few days later the Šiauliai ghetto was “liquidated”[viii] and all of the people were sent to the Stuthoff concentration camp (Sztutowa, Poland). Upon arrival at Stutthof, men and women were separated. Solomon and his son Michael were sent to the Dachau concentration camp (Bavaria, Germany). Solomon’s wife Roza and their daughter Tonia remained in Stutthof. Solomon died in 1945, three months after the prisoners at Dachau were liberated. He was buried in Gauting, near Munich.[ix] In 1989 the family reburied his remains in Tivon, Israel. After the war, Solomon’s daughter, Tonia Levin, settled in Israel. She provided a great deal of information about the lives of the members of the Germanas family. (Sadly Tonia, z”l, passed away on August 10, 2019.)

Around 1935, due to the difficult political and economic situation in Lithuania, Mordechai went to South Africa, where his older brother Itzchak had been living. At that time South Africa was believed to be a place of great opportunities. To avoid military service Mordechai changed the date of his birth on his documents from 1901 to 1904 with the help of his brother Yakov, who was living in Switzerland.[xiii] Mordechai and Itzchak first settled in Durban and later in Pietermaritzburg. There, Mordechai worked as a photographer, just as he had when he was in Rokiškis. Later, Mordechai opened a clothes-cleaning business. In addition, he had another hobby – he liked playing the violin. This is can be seen in surviving photographs. Around 1940 he married Bella. In 1942 they had a daughter Estela; in 1944 their son Julian Herman was born; and in 1945 their son David Herman came into the world. In 1974 Julian moved to Amsterdam. His daughter, Sara Mei Herman, continues the family tradition – she is a Dutch photographic artist. In 2018 the Rokiškis Regional Museum plans to arrange an exhibition of Sarah Mei Herman’s photographs, which will be dedicated to the memory of the Germanas family.

The younger son of Germanas family, Yudel (1907?-1944), also worked as a photographer. Mordechai taught him the photographic trade. It is known that they would travel together to shtetls in the Rokiškis region, stay in people’s homes, and take pictures there. For a time in 1920 both brothers worked in Kamajai (Kamai, a few kilometers south of Rokiškis).[xiv] Later Yudel and his parents moved to Kaunas. He opened his own photographic studio there in 1934 and was making photographs until October 8, 1940. This is confirmed by the contents of a Kaunas city tax-inspection file which was opened on December 27, 1938, and closed on October 8, 1940.[xv] The documents give the following information about Yudel’s business: It was located at Savanorių prospect 134, Kaunas; it had opened in 1934; there were no employees – the owner worked alone; and in 1939 the company had cash income of 2,460 Litas. The museum has some photos with stamps where another address was indicated - Ukmergės plentas (road) 48, Kaunas. In 1938 Ukmergės plentas was re-named Savanorių prospect.[xvi]

[i] Note: All notes in this English version of the article were added by the translators. They do not reflect the views of the author or of the museum.

[ii] The original article, entitled “Iš fotografijos praeities. Germanų šeimos istorija” (“From Photographs of the Past: The History of the Germanas Family”), was written by RKM deputy director Dalia Kiukienė, who is the museum’s curator of collections, and was published in the 38^th edition of the RKM’s cultural magazine, Prie Nemunėlio (By the Nemunėlis River) (Winter-Spring 2017). (The Nemunėlis (“little Nemunas / Neiman”) is the Rokiškis region’s most significant river: It begins about 6 kilometers south of the town of Rokiškis and flows northwesterly to the Latvian border.). The museum has posted a scanned image of the article, in Lithuaina, at http://www.muziejusrokiskyje.lt/wp-content/uploads/I%C5%A1-fotografijos-praeities.pdf.

[iii] The original article, which is written in Lithuanian, was first brought to Ada Gamsu’s attention by Zalman Jaloveckis (Yalovetsky), who is the son of her second cousin, Abraham Samuel Yalovetsky. Abraham Samuil Yalovetsky, was the grandson of Shimon Mendel Yalovetsky. Shimon Mendel’s niece, Raisa Matz, married Solomon Germanas. Their daughter, Tonia Germanas Levin, provided much of the information in this article. After the war, Tonia settled in Israel. All involved have given the Rokiskis SIG permission to translate this article into English and post the translation on its website.

[iv] In many cases, “lituanized” versions of Hebrew and Yiddish names appear in the original article. For example, in the original article, a boy’s name is given as “Maiklis,” which was probably a lituanized version of the Hebrew or Yiddish name for Michael and, indeed, when this person later settled in the U.S., he adopted the English name of Michael. For the purpose of creating this English translation, versions of names that are better recognized by English-speaking Jews have been used in some cases.

[v] Prior to 1918, the year when Lithuania declared its independence, this was the town’s market square (“turgaus aikštė”).

[vi] As a practical matter, once Germany and the Soviet Union occupied Poland, in September 1939, Jews living in Lithuania could not emigrate unless they had a visa or citizenship of a third country.

[vii] The Museum’s collection of photographic images created by Mordechajus (Mordechai) Germanas can be seen on the Museum's webpage.

[viii] This deliberately vague term was used by the Nazis to refer to their removal of a ghetto’s captives, which often was followed by the physical destruction of the ghetto’s buildings.

[ix] Gauting is in Bavaria, Germany. During the last days of World War II, the 8,000 surviving inmates of the Dachau concentration camp were sent on a death march to prevent them from being freed by the approaching Allied forces. Many of the prisoners were sent through Gauting en route to Bad Tölz. After the war, the U.S. military set up a special hospital to treat the concentration camp victims. Many Jews, however, were unable to recover and died. A separate Jewish cemetery was established next to Gauting’s main cemetery.

[x] Mordechai’s mother was Reistel [probably Reizl](Rosa) Germanas and his brother Solomon‘s wife was Roza Matz Germanas. In Litvish Yiddish, the dialect of Yiddish spoken in Lithuania, a long “O” in Rosa was pronounced as a long “A.” As a result, “Rosa” was pronounced “Reiza.” In the Lithuanian language, the wife of a man named Germanas has the surname of Germanienė. Thus, both women had the same name in Lithuanian.

[xi] A gimnazija is an advanced high school.

[xii] This monument, installed in Rokiskis’ independence square in 1931 to commemorate the first decade of Lithuania’s independence (1918-1928), was one of four created by Robertas Antinis, Sr., under a government commission. “Performing History: A Case of Four Monuments,” (2010) by Daiva Citvarienė. Click here for more information.

[xiii] The article suggests that Mordechai changed his birth year from 1901 to 1904 after he arrived in South Africa in the mid-1930s. However, it seems more plausible that he changed his birth year in the period 1916 to 1920. In 1935, he would have been 34 and by reducing his age would have increased his likelihood of being called into military service. More likely, the date-change occurred sometime between 1916 and 1920. The Imperial German army occupied Rokiškis and all of Lithuania in the summer of 1915. Germany in 1916 faced labor shortages and was unable to entice enough civilians to work for the military. For this reason, it introduced conscription and forced and labor in the areas it occupied. In 1916, someone who had been born in 1901 would reduce his apparent age from 15 to 12 by securing a document showing his birth year to have been 1904. Late in 1918, Germany withdrew from Lithuania but but a young man’s risk of conscription or forced labor continued. As the Germans withdrew, the Bolsheviks invaded Lithuania, seizing Rokiškis on December 27, 1918. The army of the Lithuanian state drove the Bolsheviks out on May 30, 1919, but soon after Lithuania found itself in a war with Poland that did not end until November 1920. Thus, someone born in 1901 and living in Lithuania who wished to avoid military service would have had a strong incentive to lower his apparent age during the period 1916 to 1920.

[xiv] An article about the Rokiškis-area photographer Jonas Masiulis (1904-1989) notes that photographs were required when the new Lithuanian government began issuing passports (internal identification documents) and that Mordechai Germanas and his younger brother Yudel would come from Rokiškis to Kamajai / Kamai, where they set up a workshop. Jonas, who had an interest in photography from an early age, became friends with Yudel, who showed him how the Germanas brothers would make photographs. “Jonas Masiulis - Rokiškio pašto tarnautojas, fotografas, kolekcionierius” (“Jonas Masiulis - Rokiškis postman, photographer, collector”), Dalia Kiukienė, RKM chief custodian of collections (2016). Please note that the article is in Lithuanian.

[xv] In June 1940 the Soviet Union demanded that Lithuania surrender its independence. In short order the Soviets engineered rigged elections to make it appear that Lithuania wanted to be annexed by the Soviet Union. Soon after, the Soviets radically altered the country’s economy, confiscating lands and most private businesses and disbanding most private organizations and institutions.

[xvi] “Savanoris” is the Lithuanian word for a volunteer. The new street name honored those who had volunteered in the period 1918-1920 to defend Lithuania’s independence when, in short succession, the new republic was invaded first by a Bolshevik army and then by a Polish army.

[xvii] This may be a reference to the March 27, 1944, “Kinder Aktion” in which most of the surviving Jewish children in the ghetto were seized and taken away to be murdered.

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Herman / Germanas Family [i]

From Photography of the Past: The History of the Germanas Family