Photographer Cindy Konits is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘Now I See Kiev In My Dreams’. To see Cindy ’s body of work, click on any photograph.

The Chess Men (Baltimore, Maryland)
It has been my fate that despite working my whole life for the U.S.S.R., and taking part in the struggle against fascism in the Soviet Army, I never became an equal member of society.
Now I have been living in America for five years. My former motherland threw me away without any means to support myself. America has become my new motherland…

Sophia and Babushka (Baltimore, Maryland)
“I was happy that my mother came here and enjoyed a bit of a good life. In the U.S.S.R., she was a worker and she had no rest”.

A Red Car (Baltimore, Maryland)
I like living in America but I don’t like living in Baltimore, I would like to live in California. (It’s Moree interesting and fun.)

My grandparents came to this country from Byelorussia and Lithuania. My parents assimilated rapidly into American life, moving from the Lower East Side of New York City to Jersey City, New Jersey, and finally to upper-middle class, Anglo-Saxon Westfield, New Jersey. My grandparents were very different from my parents. They ate different foods, wore different clothes, and spoke to each other in a language I didn’t understand. They died while I was still a child, and I was never able to ask important questions of them. As a teenager, my curiosity about this lost world was aroused by the plight of the Jews remaining in the Soviet Union. The restrictions on the practice of their religion and on travel within and outside their country moved me to participate in the effort to gain their freedom. Their story became a metaphor for my personal struggles and for the missing links to my past.

Now I See Kiev in My Dreams (Baltimore, Maryland)
“My cousins and aunts will never come here because they are married to Russian or Byleorussian men, and these men are in the army and they have their careers. Now I see them and Kiev in my dreams… So during the day I walk here, and at night I walk in Kiev.”

Faina and Babushka (Baltimore, Maryland)
“That’s my grandmother in the hospital after Laurence was born.
It’s a very good photograph. It’s a very warm memory. We are standing near the hospital.

“Now I See Kiev In My Dreams” was shown at The Jewish Historical Society of Maryland, Baltimore Maryland, and The Weiner Judaic Museum of The Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, Rockville Maryland. A selection of photographs from the exhibition are in the permanent collection of the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, Tel Aviv Israel, and the Jewish Heritage Center Archives, Baltimore Maryland. The Jewish Heritage Center in Baltimore received an NEH grant for the project.

All images and text © Cindy Konits