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December 17, 2004
Exhibit remembers loss
Photographs and text will commemorate local families.
PAT JOHNSON
A powerful and evocative exhibit is being compiled by the Vancouver
Holocaust Education Centre that will commemorate B.C. residents'
family members who perished in the Holocaust.
Tentatively titled Images of Loss, the exhibit is to be made up
photos and recollections contributed by B.C. residents. In addition
to providing education for the public, the exhibit will be a vehicle
for commemoration. The first photos will be displayed in late January,
with more being added continuously until Yom Hashoah.
"We will hold a service in the gallery and there will be stones
and there will be a place for people to say Kaddish and it will
become, in a sense, a commemorative exhibit," said Roberta
Kremer, director of the centre. Many survivors and others who lost
family members during the Holocaust have no photos. In some cases,
the inhabitants of entire shtetls were murdered, leaving no one
to remember. But where photos and memories do exist, Kremer said,
it is imperative to commemorate them – and to do it now.
"The big question is, who will remember these people after
the survivors are gone," she said. "The truth of the matter
is that the event will become more and more abstract. These people
will be [part of] the number, but their individuality will be lost."
Louise Sorensen, who survived the war in hiding in the Netherlands,
lost an incalculable number of family and extended relatives during
the Holocaust and she has contributed the names and photos of those
she had available to the exhibit.
"I find it very important," said Sorensen. "It's
always been my position that the people shouldn't be nameless and
vanished. They should be recorded wherever possible. I have sent
my material to Yad Vashem several years ago already, but I'm certainly
keen on people having an opportunity to commemorate them [locally]."
Already, about 400 contributions have been received and the centre
hasn't even widely publicized the exhibit yet. Those items already
donated hint at the magnitude and power the exhibit will hold not
only for survivors and their families, but for the thousands of
schoolchildren and others who visit the centre throughout the year.
Brief details of each life are included and the specifics of their
ends are a horrifying testament to what Hannah Arendt called the
banality of evil. Behind each of these pictures and short summaries
lies the life story of a human being, of premature death and the
unspoken or unknown indignities and anguish of the final moments,
weeks or years. The pictures often belie the horrors, many of the
photos coming from glory days before the rise of Nazism. They are
family portraits of happy times, children standing in snow, glamorous
couples, men with handlebar moustaches in shiny top hats and fur-trimmed
greatcoats. One photo shows a family picnic, with the men, all in
ties and suits, smiling and holding beer and wine bottles. Most
of the photos are accompanied by recollections, many of which come
from people who were children at the time, recalling what they can
of the adults they would never see again. "Had a beautiful
cantorial voice," says one. "Very good father," another
says. "Was a pianist graduated from Petersburg conservatory."
The recollections can be wrenching.
"Emmy was a bubbly, happy and smart little girl. Last word
about her was from somebody who had seen her lying, alone and crying,
in a dirty cot in camp."
Many of the people in the photos are presumed to have died after
the war, though no records exist. Others are painfully precise about
the final moments: "Hanged herself after she was told that
her only son and his wife were hanged by the Germans in ghetto,
Lodz, 1942." Two sisters died "in their room at home,
shot by the Ukrainian police and German soldiers, together with
their mother and four children." "Bayoneted by Polish
soldiers from the Armia Krajowa in October 1943 in Yureli Forest,
Poland." "Shot while in transit to Auschwitz."
Some take only a word or two to convey the fate. "Died in Warsaw
Ghetto." "Hunger." "Sobibor – Gassed."
Others state simply "don't know."
Hints of heroism are there too. "Died in 1944 in the uprising
trying to escape. He was nine years old." "Would not separate
from her mother on liquidation."
One betrays the phenomenon of neighbor turning on Jewish neighbor:
"Recognized one of the Polish killers. Called him by name."
The extent of loss is incomprehensible. "She had eight children
– four boys, four girls – all perished." "Had
10 brothers and sisters: All except one perished in Lodz Ghetto."
These brief vignettes are painful yet necessary steps to putting
humanity to the numbers, said Kremer.
"This is actually what the Holocaust is about," said Kremer.
"Genocide takes place by killing one after another after another."
To contribute photos to the exhibit, call 604-264-0499.
Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.
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