New London exhibition brings lost Jewish shtetl lives back into focus
Litvak Life: Stories of Jewish Lithuania displays photographs, letters and personal stories shared by members of the UK Jewish community
The historic world of Jewish Lithuania is featured in a new exhibition opening at JW3 in north London in November 2026, drawing on photographs, letters, memoirs and personal stories preserved by descendants of the families who lived there.
For centuries, Lithuania was home to one of Europe’s most significant Jewish communities, renowned for its religious scholarship, intellectual life, Yiddish culture and vibrant towns and cities.
Between 1881 and 1914, millions of Jews left the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement. Many Litvaks made new lives in the UK, South Africa, USA and elsewhere, carrying with them their language, traditions and memories of the places they had left behind.
Litvak Life: Stories of Jewish Lithuania, traces that world through the eyes of the families who lived in it, exploring everyday life in the shtetls, education, religious and political movements, migration and the destruction of Jewish communities during the Holocaust.
It also asks how those memories have survived across generations, and what it means for descendants to rediscover the places, photographs and stories of their ancestors.
The exhibition has been brought together through contributions from families of Lithuanian Jewish descent, many of whom have preserved photographs and letters for generations.
Among its highlights are images of family life, schools, markets, weddings and summer holidays — intimate glimpses of a society too often remembered only through the tragedy of its destruction.
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