Lea's Father Voigtlander Brillant

[royalrat]

During the worst of Second World War, Nahum Valach escaped, together with his twin brother and father from the Polish city of Lodz that was captured by the German army. Just before reaching the border, Kalman, Nahum’s brother, decided to go back to Lodz to bring his girlfriend. On their way back to regroup they were caught by a border patrol that separated them and sent them to prison in Kazakhstan. Kalman and his girlfriend never met again. When reaching safety in Russia, Nahum and his father were sent to Komi ASSR and assigned to hard manual labor. Nahum’s father couldn’t survive the impossible cold winter and died from an illness. After a period of working in the woods, Nahum was sent to work in his field of expertise – accounting. His supervisor at the factory was a beautiful Russian woman called Raya. The two got to know each other and eventually got married. When the war ended they decided it was better for them to escape communist Russia. They bundled their two years old child Lea, and sneaked through the western border. They traveled all the way to central Europe, and by 1947 they’ve reached Munich and decided to settle there for a while. Nahum worked for a Zionist organization for two years, and by 1949 the family finally decided it was best for them to go to Israel. In Israel Nahum was finally reunited with his twin brother Kalman and his sister Tola. Both of his parents didn’t make it through the war.

Among the few things Nahum took with him from Germany was his Voigtländer Brillant camera. At the early 50th Nahum still used the camera, taking pictures of his growing family. When he and his family settled down, Nahum decided to get rid of all of his German’s possessions. He didn’t want anything to do with the country that was responsible for his parent’s death. But somehow the Voigtländer stayed in its place, hidden inside the closet. More than 60 years later, Lea, Nahum’s daughter, found the camera stored at the cellar of her house in Herzliyya. Fortunately she decided to give me a call and let me try it out.


(A picture of Lea and her parents taken with the Voigtländer Brillant in Munich, 1947)

A link for the full story and photos:
yanivberman.com/2012/03/02/voigtlander-brillant/

[nikonbob]

You always wonder what cameras would tell you if they could talk. This is a good example of what they might say if they could. I enjoyed the link very much.

Bob

[daveh]

Yaniv, always interesting. Thanks for posting.

Bob, I made the same point myself the other day about something passing from person to person. Going back umpteen years I remember a film based on a coin along those lines. I'm pretty sure the film was German and would have been pre-Fassbinder.

[nikonbob]

Dave

Yea, I guess that is pretty much the question with any inanimate object from past times.

Bob

[daveh]

I also have the thoughts with photographs, "I wonder who they were and what are they doing now", or on a older photo "I wonder how their life panned out". There is a photo of my mother's class at junior school taken in about 1926. They would have all been born in the 1918-9 year, so would have been 20 or 21 at the start of WWII. I wonder how many of them made it to 1945.

Dave.

[nikonbob]

Dave

I have a similar photo of my mother's class from about the same time from Germany and have wondered the same thing.

Bob

[daveh]

Bob,

It's a strange world. In, I think, 1959 my grandfather came to the Costa Brava, Spain with us on summer holiday. He met there a German of similar age (mid 70s) and they struck up a friendship. I always remember seeing his name when they changed addresses: Strauß. It was only later I realised that the ß was the German double s. They had both fought in WWI - opposite sides of course. Just over 40 years earlier they might well have been firing at each other. As I say. it's a strange world.

Dave.

[SidW]

A remarkable and humbling story. I can't even begin to imagine how they managed the trek. Komi is east of Archangelsk, stretching roughly from lat. 59-60 (Stockolm, Orkneys, Hudson Bay) to the Arctic circle. Moscow is halfway to Munich, well give or take ...

[photax]

Have many thanks for sharing this story, I read it carefully. It is our duty to learn from history !
After WWII the Russians received the construction drawings of the Brillant as reparation in 1945. They built a copy named "Komsomoletz" from 1946 till 1949. Here is an early example fom my collection:



MIK

[mickeyobe]

Yaniv,

Your ability to breath life into an inanimate object is quite remarkable.

Thank you for this moving story.

Mickey

[royalrat]

Mar 8, 2012 17:59:56 GMT -5 mickeyobe said:

Yaniv,

Your ability to breath life into an inanimate object is quite remarkable.

Thank you for this moving story.

Mickey

Thank you Mickey! Your kind words always lifts my spirit and drives me toward the next story.

[royalrat]

Mar 8, 2012 14:36:49 GMT -5 photax said:

Have many thanks for sharing this story, I read it carefully. It is our duty to learn from history !
After WWII the Russians received the construction drawings of the Brillant as reparation in 1945. They built a copy named "Komsomoletz" from 1946 till 1949. Here is an early example fom my collection:

MIK

Thanks MIK!

That is an interesting subject you've got there. I had a Kiev camera with a similar story...

Yaniv.

[barbarian]

Yaniv, a remarkable story. With a little work, that could be published. Almost a century of world history swirling around a little camera. Amazing.

Is this the Brilliant model with a little compartment in back for the extinction meter? Those almost always get lost. I've looked at a lot of them, and only one still had the meter.

[Deleted]

What an interesting story.Thank you for sharing it with us.

Wayne

[col]

I have one of the Russian LOMO copies .. If you wanna know what I think of the LOMO quality..not much! I'm on the ebay lookout for a Voigtländer