Focuses on an elite group of two dozen Soviet-Jewish photographers who participated in a social project they believed in and with which they were emotionally and intellectually invested -- they were charged by the Stalinist state to tell the visual story of the unprecedented horror we now call the Holocaust.

How a group of Jews from the provinces built Soviet photojournalism -- Seeing red: Jewish photographers, the rise of the second generation, and Soviet photojournalism of the 1930s -- Soviet Jews on both sides of the camera: the photographs of Jewish agricultural colonies and Birobidzhan -- "Without the newspaper, we are defenseless!": photojournalists and the war -- Picturing grief, documenting crimes: Soviet Holocaust photography -- When Jews talked to Jews: wartime Soviet Yiddish culture and Soviet photographers' Jewishness -- From photojournalism to icons of war and the Holocaust: photographs and photographers after the War -- Epilogue : Soviet Jewish photographers as war heroes.