Carrying a witness: portraits of survivors of the Holocaust

It was a photoshop like a few others: those who posed for the camera on this day in Miami are not fashion models, at least stores. But they are Models in their own way – models of courage, courage and grace, all formed in a Holocaust pot.

“That’s something we wear,” said 87-year-old Judy Rodan. “It’s something that can’t be washed. There are no pills, treatments, without psychology or psychiatry. I think I did it all.”

Rodan was hidden at a Catholic monastery in Budapest until the end of the war. “All my immediate family is eliminated in Auschwitz,” she said.

Eighty -eight -year -old Miriam Klein Kasesendorf spent the war on the escape from her house in the then Czechoslovakia. “My father grabbed his elbows and pulled him out of our house on the evening of Shabbat,” she said.

And 95-year-old David Schecter survived not one, but two of the extermination camps. Now he’s talking about it, he said, because “he felt that our children should know.”

We really need to know, but we lose 8% -10% of our eyewitnesses every year. From 200,000 or more, it is estimated that half of all survivors of the Holocaust will disappear in the next 5-7 years.

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

Because of this, Laub has photographed as many survivors from the Holocaust – more than 300 portraits so far, and she is far from finished. From her subjects she said: “There is pride, there is strength and resistance, and there is sadness. Some people become emotional. Some feel like, I’m here. I’m proud and strong here.“

We were witnessing the moment when Kassendorf and another survivor, 89-year-old Stella Sonnenschein met for the first time … Colleagues on the road, none of them wanted to be involved.

“It’s our mission, it’s our mission; that’s why we survived,” Kassendorf said. “My father was a rabbi and told me that when I grow up, I should tell the world.”

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

In January 2024, some of Laub’s portraits became larger than life, when she was projected throughout New York (including Brooklyn Bridge) in honor of International Holocaust Memories. Laub did not ask the city for permission; This is exactly what she did, under the cover of Darkness – a respected but bold project she called Live2Tell.

“It was really, like, Kaper, a renegade Gerili artist project,” Laub said.

One survivor, Pearl Field, said, “I’m really impressed that one woman has gone through all this to keep the Holocaust alive.”

Laub said she had no idea what would happen. What happened either more The survivors began to appear. What made many of them lead to Laub’s camera, he says, were events from October 7, 2023.

Kassendorf said, “I thought, My God, they do it again. They kill Jews!“

“I was experiencing my damn past,” Schecter said, “and I couldn’t shake him for a few weeks.”

Rodan said, “When I see all this disaster and craziness around us, it is 6, 8 thousand miles away, but it’s touching. It’s not done.”

The Israeli response, aimed at removing the hamas, leveled Gaza, displacing almost 2 million people, which encouraged protests in the United States.

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

It comes at a time when the awareness of the Holocaust itself is already darkening. “About a third of all Americans say that they saw the denial and distortion of the Holocaust on social media,” said Greg Schneider. He is the Executive Vice President of the Conference on Requests, an organization that is still negotiating with Germany and Austria for the compensation of Jewish survivors. “As the survivors unfortunately leave us in the largest number, they are mostly concerned about their heritage,” he said.

Last month, the conference on claims posted a survey of the Holocaust awareness in seven countries across Europe and the United States. “We were shocked by some results,” Schneider said.

For example, a large part of the surveyed believed that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was 2 million or less, not 6 million who were actually killed.

And almost half of the surveyed Americans could not appoint any German concentration camp or ghetto. “So they couldn’t mention Auschwitz as an example,” Schneider said. “Half Americans. So, imagine what it will be for 20 years or 30 years old, when we do not have the survivors of the Holocaust who can go to schools and tell their stories. “

Even Laub herself says that she has left the past much more often in the past than she should. “When my grandfather talked about wrapping himself every day on his way to school because of the Jews, it didn’t really sink to me how it had to feel,” she said. “And now I’m feeling so guilty.”

“You feel guilty because you haven’t asked enough questions?” I asked.

“I didn’t. I didn’t. I was too young.”

Last month, Laub took his latest portraits to Live2tell to Miami Beach, where Schecter, Rodan and Kassendorf saw themselves as high figures as truly … All those who passed through the night of the 80th. The Auschwitz liberation anniversary. As Laub said, “I watched and sought wisdom. I discovered that light of all survivors who became part of this work.”

Children of Holocaust – they are all we have left, those who have never had a childhood luxury. Gillian Laub gave hundreds of them perhaps a last chance to witness a brutality firsthand that the world should never see again.

Speaking at the event in Miami, Miriam Klein Kassendorf said, “Who knew it would be our revenge hates, and Hitler, anti -Semitism and Nazis? As we say in Jidish, Peace Zenen to… We are here. “

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The story produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Editor: Carol Ross.

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