Any exhibition of photographs of the Jews of Poland in the decades before the Holocaust is going to be heartrending. Most affecting of all is the exhibition that does not proceed from the fact of destruction, but from the fact of the existence of the civilization of Polish Jewry in the first place. To show the living alive, in as many facets as possible, is where “And I Still See Their Faces: The Vanished World of Polish Jews,” on exhibit at the Yeshiva University Museum, succeeds so well.

The museum is one of five outstanding organizations that came together in 2000 as the Center for Jewish History, on 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The center is one of this city’s stellar cultural attractions, offering first-rate exhibitions, concerts, and unexampled research collections for scholars. (The other partners in the center are the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the American Sephardi Federation.) “And I Still See Their Faces” is the result of a project undertaken by the Shalom Foundation of Warsaw. In 1994, the foundation sent out a call asking people to send in any photographs they had showing the Jews of Poland. The foundation had no idea what to expect. The response was overwhelming. To date, it has received some 9,000 photographs.

From these, the exhibition was culled. “And I Still See Their Faces” has finally made it to New York City after a tour that has taken the exhibition to Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, St. Petersburg, Paris, Brussels, Los Angeles, Detroit, Boston, Mexico City, Jerusalem, Cracow,/ Lódz, and Poznan after originating at Warsaw’s Zacheta Gallery in 1996.

Wall texts reproduce material from letters that accompanied the photographs that were sent in. Early on we encounter the text: “Her name was Taube, or Tauber or maybe Tauberg. I remembered the names from stories told by my mother. Regina was her very good friend from a home-tailoring or lace-making course. She had seven children.” The accompanying photograph shows a mother with six children, the youngest of whom is a baby that the mother holds tightly wrapped, in a bundle. The mother is a very handsome woman with a radiant smile. Her darling little daughter, a look of eager expectancy on her face, holds her mother’s hand, while four young sons look restless, as though they’d rather be doing anything than posing for a photograph. The photograph seems semi-impromptu — the family does not stand as though for any kind of formal portrait. The whole background is taken up by a long thatched-roof house made of timber planks. It is undated, probably from the 1910s or 1920s, and is of remarkable quality. These are peasants, and that plus the universality of their moods strikes just the right note at the beginning of what becomes a multifaceted journey.

“My grandfather, who took this photo, told me that this man traveled from village to village. Unfortunately, I do not remember his name.” But no one will forget his visage: the wry, slightly bemused expression — as though to say, “Why would you want to photograph me?” — and the big, bright, alert eyes that appear on so many of the male faces in this show. This nomad bears a look wary, weary, humane, good-humored, and entirely — you see it over and over in these faces — self-possessed. Other men wear a look of piercing suspicion, with eyes that bore right through you.

There are street photos as well, of city and village streets where synagogues, later destroyed, tower over surrounding houses. The rusticated stone façades of fancy Lubartowska Street in Lublin in 1937 couldn’t have been very old, but in 1937 all the world looked old. In Poland by then even the children looked preternaturally old.

My favorite image is from the 1920s. Two immensely dignified, serious, bearded, well-dressed gentlemen play chess with rapt concentration. The board and pieces are elaborately carved of wood. The table is a rustic wooden one. One man sits upon a bentwood chair, the other on a wooden bench, outdoors in a park. The image is very crisp. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the men’s well-shod feet, which press firmly upon the soil in proportion to the intensity of their concentration. These men have rooted themselves to the spot, on the Bug River.

As many affecting women as men appear in these images. Good-looking Ala Bryszowa, an attorney, stands with her horse; the Nazis murdered Ala and her daughter in Warsaw in 1944. Of serene-faced, pretty Lotte Bachner: “She had recurrent fits of mental illness. Her own sister shot her dead, fearing that she would not be able to provide the necessary care for Lotte.” And: “This lovely girl is Lusia Bronstein….” Seated at a piano, which you just get the feeling she has mastered, the sharp-eyed, blossoming young girl, with all the bounty of the ages in front of her, would perish in a camp.

From peasants to bourgeoisie, from soldiers to rabbis, in candids and formal portraits of individuals, couples, groups, old people, and children — the array, varied as can be though not overwhelming in number, shows us a complete civilization. Go see it.

Until June 24 (15 W. 16th St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-294-8330).