Holocaust Survivors Exhibit Boston Common, 80 Yrs. Post 1938 Krystallnacht Nazi Pogrom
Portraits of Holocaust Survivors Look History In The Face, Graham Ambrose, The Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 2018. Excerpts:
BROOKLINE — In Nazi Germany, your face could seal your fate. A nose too long, a skull too broad, a certain sort of beard, and someone — a state agent with craniometric tools, a prying neighbor armed with racial stereotypes — might deem you Jewish.
Between 1941 and 1945 the Nazis systematically murdered some 6 million Jews in a genocide that nearly exterminated Europe’s Jewish population. But from the horrors of the Holocaust emerged survivors. They’re women like Esther Kampler, 89, of Brookline, Massachusetts who lost both of her parents in the Shoah and has lived in Greater Boston since fleeing Europe in 1946.
Now portraits of Kampler, Levin, and other survivors are in Boston Common as part of an international exhibit by the German-Italian photographer Luigi Toscano. “Lest We Forget” displays in public spaces supersize portraits of Holocaust survivors, honoring human faces once demonized by Nazi propaganda. The public exhibit on Boston Common runs through Nov. 10. The timing coincides with the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), a Nazi pogrom in November 1938, when Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues, and hospitals across Germany were ransacked and destroyed.
Toscano, 46, lives in Mannheim, Germany. He remembers traveling to Auschwitz as a teenager. He wanted answers. He found horrors. Since 2015, Toscano has documented more than 200 survivors in Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Israel, and cities across the United States. The survivors appear vulnerable, even as their stares penetrate the lens.
Toscano said he is motivated by what he heard from a 95-year-old Auschwitz survivor living in Charlotte, N.C.: “If you forget the past, you are doomed to repeat it.” A recent survey found that more than one-fifth of all Americans ages 18 to 34 are unaware of or unsure about the Holocaust. More than half of Americans think Hitler came to power by force. (He was elected democratically.) Seventy percent think that fewer people today care about the Holocaust than in the past. A majority of Americans think the Holocaust could happen again.
“People have forgotten the history,” Toscano said. “You see the political situation. We have this political situation in Germany and Europe also. But I need to say something, to open my mouth about what is wrong. And my tool is to take pictures.” -Read More...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/portraits-of-holocaust-survivors-look-history-in-the-face/ar-BBOrofE?li=BBnb7Kz
Artist Luigi Toscano & crew set up large photographic portraits of Holocaust survivors in the Boston Common for exhibit.
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Seventy percent think that fewer people today care about the Holocaust than in the past.
I am definitely one of those people, especially given the title I chose, a stat from the article, but also those who spew "Jews talk too much about the Holocaust", "Figures he is playing the Holocaust card" (said of Bernie Sanders, right here!), and other such statements. Desecration of Holocaust sites and people whining about prosecutions of old Nazis is "cruel" adds more to why I feel few people care about the Holocaust. There are other reasons too.
