Usher Khiter and Elyukim Maltz: In Search of Lost Research Expeditions from the Jewish Museum in Odessa

The paper presents the pre-War period in the life and work of two architects, Usher (Oscar Efimovich) Chiter (1899-1967) and Elyukim (Ilia Izrailevich) Maltz (1898-1973), both graduates of the Odessa School of Architecture. The time span in question was bound up with work done by the architects for the Mendele Mocher Sforim All-Ukrainian Museum of Jewish Proletarian Culture in Odessa (1927-1934; 1940-1941). Based on documents and visual materials from a number of museums and archives located in Ukraine, Russia, and Israel, as well as on private collections, including those of the architects’ families living in Moscow, where Chiter and Maltz had moved in the late 1920s, we have attempted to trace and reconstruct the architects’ artistic research expeditions along the former Pale of Jewish Settlement. A total of seven field trips took place in parts of Western Ukraine – to Podolia and Volhynia – with the aim of collecting materials and exhibition items for the museum and of making original drawings and water colors from nature showing views of Jewish landmarks, such as synagogues, cemeteries, and residential housing construction. Six of these trips have been successfully dated with precision; we have also been able to trace the particularly extensive and productive research expedition of 1927, including an exact fragment of the expedition’s itinerary, in connection with surviving letters, as well as original works and reproduced copies.