I’m sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon and reading through this trilogy of books on Holocaust survivors. The writing is spare while the photos glow.
This would be good reading for Anna Breslaw and those who published her at Tablet Magazine.
In July, Anna wrote and this Jewish magazine published:
Since I was 12 I’ve had an unappealing, didactic distrust of people with the extreme will to live. My father’s parents were Holocaust survivors, and in grade school I received the de rigueur exposure to the horror–visiting geriatric men and women with numbers tattooed on their arms, completing assigned reading like The Diary of Anne Frank and Night. But the more information I received, the less sympathy the survivors elicited from me. Each time we clapped for the old Hungarian lady who spoke about Dachau, each time Elie Wiesel threw another anonymous anecdote of betrayal onto a page, I eyed it askance, thinking What did you do that you’re not talking about? I had the gut instinct that these were villains masquerading as victims who, solely by virtue of surviving (very likely by any means necessary), felt that they had earned the right to be heroes, their basic, animal self-interest dressed up with glorified phrases like “triumph of the human spirit.”
I wondered if anyone had alerted Hitler that in the event that the final solution didn’t pan out, only the handful of Jews who actually fulfilled the stereotype of the Judenscheisse (because every group has a few) would remain to carry on the Jewish race–conniving, indestructible, taking and taking. My grandparents were not excluded from this suspicion. The same year, during a family dinner conversation about Terri Schiavo, my father made the serious request that should he fall into a vegetative state, he would like for us to keep him on life support indefinitely. Today he and I are estranged for a number of other reasons that are all somehow the same reason.
When words like “victim” are over-used, we lose our sensitivity to life’s true victims, those who’ve been the butt of monstrous cruelty.
If you are compassionate to everyone, then you are compassionate to no one because “compassion” by its definition means you dole it out unequally.
One thing that strikes me from these particular survivor stories is that despite their suffering, they picked themselves up and made more impressive lives than most of those in the Western world who did not suffer out of the norm.
Press release: The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the oldest Holocaust museum in the U.S., and A Dime and A Penny Foundation, a Holocaust non profit, are pleased to announce the release of the portrait book trilogy, Living Witnesses: Triumph Over Tragedy.
“The books serve as a reminder and a testament to the spirit of survival burning in anyone who suffers and overcomes,” said Mark Rothman, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.
The project captures the lives and experiences of Holocaust Survivors including 30 people from Los Angeles as well as other parts of the US, Israel and Europe. Each photo illustrates the glorious conquest of the heart-wrenching past and how those experiences helped shape the Survivors’ lives. Book proceeds will be donated to Jewish Family Services on behalf of Holocaust Survivors in need.
“I understand the value of a photograph,” said Monni Must, portrait photographer and co-author of the books. “Five years ago when I lost my daughter tragically, I turned to Holocaust Survivors who not only taught me the value of a photograph, but they taught me the most important lesson of all: how to go on in the wake of tragedy.”
The world-renowned, one hundred and three year old Sir Nicholas Winton, a man responsible for saving the lives of 669 children during the Holocaust, is one of the many featured in the project. Sir Winton lead an effort to provide safe train passage from Europe to London as part of what became known as the kinder transports.
All three books are available on-line for $350.00 at http://dimeandpenny.org/store/. Holocaust Survivors will receive a discount.
As Survivors age, organizations such as Jewish Family Services find them needing increasing amounts of a wide range of assistance. Their needs are often much greater than those of other elderly men and women, in large part because of the deprivations they suffered during the Holocaust.
About Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust:
Holocaust Survivors founded the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust in the early 1960s as a permanent repository for their personal artifacts from the Holocaust and the world the Nazis destroyed. Today the Museum hosts docent-led school tours, survivor lectures, exhibitions on the Holocaust, and numerous special events. Museum admission is always free. Visit us on-line at http://www.lamoth.org on the Web.
About A Dime and A Penny Foundation:
A Dime and A Penny 501(c)3 was created in 2011 by Detroit-based photographer Monni Must. The photographic charity endeavors of the organization exist to help others find hope in the midst of tragedy. The foundation produces books, exhibits and other projects whose proceeds help those in need. To RSVP, email RSVP (at) dimeandpenny (dot) org or for more information about visit http://www.dimeandpenny.org/ .
