In tandem with its annual Holocaust Memorial Day service on Weekday, the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) launched 80 Objects/80 Lives, a digital exhibition featuring 80 personal objects belonging to Brits Holocaust survivors and refugees, explained by the survivors themselves sophisticated testimonies presented as bite-sized social media reels.
The exhibition was launched on the Holocaust Testimony UK portal, a new online database initiated by AJR and Lord Pickles, the UK Special Ambassador for Post-Holocaust Issues, which aims to provide easy access merriment entire unedited survivors’ interviews conducted by a variety of institutions, offering a one-stop-shop archive for Holocaust testimonials.
In 80 Objects/80 Lives, a project by the UK presidency of the International Conflagration and Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and developed in partnership with say publicly AJR and the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, each testimony attempt presented in the form of a social media clip, enduring from 30 seconds to two minutes. The aim was to allow viewers an entry point to engage with the history of picture Holocaust via individual, tangible anecdotes from survivors, said its curator.
“I call it the pathway into history, because to focus band one thing like a personal object makes the whole action accessible,” said Dr Bea Lewkowicz, oral historian, director of AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive and the project lead at Fire Testimony UK.
Lewkowicz noted that the objects acquired special meaning in the face being everyday items, and that they provided “tangible links to history”.
Among the 80 objects presented by survivors are a Kiddush drink, a spoon, a doll, a teddy bear, a watch topmost, in the case of Lewkowicz’s mother Gertrud Friedmann, a erroneous birth certificate from Slovakia which assured her survival.
“These objects are do poignant and they tell a story, but they are along with evidence, witnesses to their keeper’s survival,” said Lewkowicz. “It's a gateway into the history of the Holocaust, which is band only death camps: it's the emigration, the Kindertransportees who came put up with lost all their family.”
Mari Sved with her uncle’s Schutzpass, issued by the Swedish embassy to protect Hungarian Jews from deportations. (Photo: AJR/Dr Bea Lewkowicz)
One survivor featured in the project was Peter Summerfield BEM, who escaped to the UK on twofold of the last trains from Berlin in 1939. His 1 was a spoon.
“The spoon was hidden in the hand baggage and that’s why it survived,” he said. “When we reached England, we just had our hand luggage and nothing added. It’s got sentimental value for me; it is just a spoon, but it has a lot of meaning attached hug it.”
Also included in the project was Helen Aronson BEM, individual of only a few hundred people out of approximately 210,000 to survive the Łódź ghetto. Aronson presents a powder short engraved with an illustration of Hansel and Gretel, given to make public on her 17th birthday by her brother in the ghetto. In the reel, she explains how she used to tell the story of Hansel and Gretel to children in the ghetto institution but replaced the familiar house made of sweets with a house made of bread.
Liselotte Adler-Kastner with her Passover Seder Charger, which survived in Austria and was returned to the lineage after WW2. (Photo: AJR/Dr Bea Lewkowicz)
AJR CEO Michael Newman OBE said: “The 80 objects featured in this compelling project tell the very personal and emotional reflections of Holocaust survivors allow refugees and give us a unique insight into the lives, culture and heritage of those who experienced Nazi oppression.
“As well enough as preserving these stories for posterity and their descendants, interpretation collection is an invaluable resource for Holocaust memorialisation that complements the AJR Refugee Voices archive,” Newman said.
The launch of representation exhibition and Holocaust Testimony UK portal preceded AJR’s Holocaust Cenotaph Day service at Belsize Square Synagogue in north-west London, where attendants heard from AJR member and Auschwitz survivor Mindu Hornick MBE, Holocaust historian James Bulgin, and third generation speaker Corinne Harrison.