Photo Collections

Lask Collection - The Family Photographs of Marianne Lask

In September 1998, the Kafka Project uncovered 60 previously unknown photographs of Dora Diamant, her husband Lutz Lask, who survived a Siberian gulag, and daughter Franziska Marianne Lask, plus other Lask family members, including the matriarch and East German Communist heroine, Berta Lask. The Lask Collection is registered with the Library of Congress. Contact us for complete list and permission to reprint.


Dora Diamant and Marianne in Russia, 1938
May not be reprinted without permission.
© Lask Collection


Marianne Lask passport photo for her first trip to East Berlin, 1956
May not be reprinted without permission.
© Lask Collection


Lutz Lask, after release from Soviet Union, 1956
May not be reprinted without permission.
© Lask Collection


Dora Diamant and her infant daughter in Berlin, 1934
May not be reprinted without permission.
© Lask Collection


Berta Lask was a beloved Communist writer, who refused to leave the Soviet Union without her son's Lutz's release.
May not be reprinted without permission.
© Lask Collection

 

Diamant and Lask Families

The Berlin research revealed the existence of Dora's living family members, beginning in September 1998 with her only living nephew Zvi Diamant, born in 1947 in the release camp at Dachau. Upon learning about his cousins, the Lasks in Berlin, he flew to Berlin to meet them. Following a Tel Aviv newspaper article about Zvi's discovery of his relationship to Dora, he was contacted by Dora's half-sister Sara, who, unknown to him, lived less than ten miles away. Within days Zvi, who thought his father's family all dead, was reunited with his long lost aunt and cousins. On August 15, 1999, 49 years after her death, Dora's family from Israel and Germany were joined by more than 75 people from around the world at a stone setting ceremony at Dora's unmarked grave in East Ham.


Dora's sister, Sara Baumer with her daughter Tova Perlmutter and Zvi Diamant at the August 15th ceremony at the United Synagogue Cemetery on Marlow Road.


Ruth Lask Kessentini, Dora's great-niece, Kathi Diamant and Zvi Diamant, August 11, 1999, the day the stone was placed.