Between 1935 and 1938 photographer Roman Vishniac explored the cities and villages of Eastern Europe, capturing life in the Jewish shtetlekh of Poland, Romania, Russia, and Hungary, communities that even then seemed threatened—not by destruction and extermination, which no one foresaw, but by change.

Using a hidden camera and under difficult circumstances, Vishniac was able to take over sixteen thousand photographs; most were left with his father in a village in France for the duration of the war. Below is a collection of 20 black and white photos, which is devoted to a subject Vishniac especially loved, and one whose mystery and spontaneity he captured with particular poignancy: children.