Witness: Portraits of Holocaust survivors Blogging Sole

It was a photo session like a few others: those who pose for the camera that day in Miami are not fashion models, at least per job. But they are The models in their own way – models of courage, courage and grace, all trained in the holocaust crucible.

“This is something we wear,” said Judy Rodan, 87. “This is something that cannot be washed. No pills, no treatments, no psychology or psychiatry. I think I did everything.

Rodan was hidden in a Catholic convent in Budapest until the end of the war. “My whole immediate family was eliminated in Auschwitz,” she said.

Miriam Klein Kassendorf, eighty-eight years old, passed the war on the run at home in what was then Czechoslovakia. “My father was caught by his elbows, and he was dragged out of our house during a Shabbat evening,” she said.

And David Schecter, 95, did not survive one, but two extermination camps. He talks about it now, he said, because “he considered that our children should know.”

It is indeed necessary to know, but we lose 8% to 10% of our eyewitnesses each year. Of about 200,000, it is estimated that half of all the Holocaust survivors will have disappeared in the next 5 to 7 years.

“This woman said,” What will happen when I’m not here to tell my story? “” Said photographer Gillian LAUB. “Who will tell my story and, as, say, It happened to me. Please believe me?‘”

This is why LAUB has taken photos of more survivors from the holocaust that it can – more than 300 portraits so far, and it is far from over. From her subjects, she said, “There is pride, there is strength and resilience, and there is also sadness. Some people become emotional. Some people feel, I am here. I am here proud and strong.“”

We attended at a time when Kassendorf and another survivor, Stella Sonnenschein, 89, met for the first time … The other travelers on a road that none of them wanted to be.

“This is our mission, it is our mission; This is why we have survived, ”said Kassendorf. “My father was a rabbi, and he told me that when I was tall, I should say it to the world.”

“So we have a job to do,” said Sonnenschein. “We have to live for a very long time!”

In January 2024, some of the portraits of Laub became larger than life, when she projected them throughout the city of New York (including on the bridge of Brooklyn) in honor of the International Day of the Souvenir of the ‘Holocaust. Laub did not ask for permission from the city; She has just done so, under the cover of Darkness – a respectful but daring project that she called Live2tell.

“It was really, like a caper, a renegat guerrilla art project,” said Laub.

A survivor, Pearl Field, said: “I am really impressed that a woman has gone through all of this to keep the Holocaust alive.”

LAUB said that she had no idea what would happen. What happened was more The survivors began to come forward. What led many of them to LAUB’s camera, she said, were the events of October 7, 2023.

Kassendorf said, “I thought, My God, they start again. They kill the Jews!“”

“I was returning my fucking past,” said Schecter, “and I couldn’t shake him for several weeks.”

Rodan said: “When I see this whole catastrophe and this madness around us, it is 6, 8 thousand kilometers away, but it’s touching. It is without espionage.

Israel’s response, aimed at eliminating Hamas, leveled Gaza, moving nearly 2 million people, which sparked demonstrations in the United States.

According to LAUB, “they have never seen or experienced anti -Semitism that is currently happening in their lives in America.”

This comes at a time when awareness of the holocaust itself is already decreasing. “About a third of all Americans say they have seen denial and distortion of the holocaust on social networks,” said Greg Schneider. He is executive vice-president of the Conference of Complaints, an organization which is still negotiating with Germany and Austria for repairs to Jewish survivors. “As the survivors leave us unfortunately in greater numbers, they are mainly concerned about their inheritance,” he said.

Last month, the Conference of Complaints published a survey on awareness of the holocaust in seven countries across Europe and the United States. “We were shocked by some of the results,” said Schneider.

For example, a large part of those who questioned thought that the number of these Jews killed in the Holocaust was 2 million or less, not the 6 million that were really murdered.

And almost half of the Americans interviewed could not appoint a single German or Ghetto concentration camp. “So they couldn’t mention Auschwitz as an example,” said Schneider. “”Half Americans. So imagine what will be in 20 years or 30 years, when we do not have survivors of the holocaust who can enter schools and tell their stories. »»

Even Laub herself says that she has left the past in the past much more often than she should. “When my grandfather spoke of the beat every day on the way to school to be Jewish, that did not really interfere with what it should feel,” she said. “And I feel so guilty now.”

“Do you feel guilty because you have not asked enough questions?” I asked.

“I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I was too young.

Last month, LAUB took its last LIVE2TELL portraits to Miami Beach, where SCHECT, RODAN and KASSENDORF considered themselves the imposing figures they are really … all radiating at night on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz . As Laub said: “I was looking for and wisers. I found this light from all the survivors who were part of this work. »»

The children of the holocaust – they are all we have left, those who have never had the luxury of a childhood. Gillian LAUB gave hundreds of it perhaps a last chance to testify with the first hand of a brutality that the world should never see again.

Speaking during the Miami event, Miriam Klein Kassendorf said: “Who knew it would be our revenge for hatred, Hitler, and anti -Semitism and the Nazis? As we say in Yiddish, Mir Zenen does… We are here.

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History produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Publisher: Carol Ross.

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