Title: Old Jewish Cemetery, Vilna, Russia

Description

This 1922 photograph of the old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, Lithuania, is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890-1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives. Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire before it achieved independence in 1918. Vilnius (Vilna, in Russian) was an important center of Jewish life until the Holocaust that occurred during World War II.