It is a great honour for me to open the Humans of the Holocaust photo exhibition at this International Conference Against Antisemitism.

The creator of the exhibition, photographer Erez Kaganovitz, who will speak to us in a moment, is himself the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. He told me that he came up with the idea for the project years ago, after reading that a third of young Americans do not believe that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust – and that two-thirds of American millennials have never heard of Auschwitz. His idea was not to replace historical study of the Holocaust or the possibility of confronting its horrors at actual historical sites – but rather to complement these experiences with the personal, emotional stories of survivors:

Stories told through unique photographic portraits of people and personalities.

Stories behind the faces.

Stories of how the horror that remained in the families of survivors continued to shape lives.

But also, stories of how people came to terms with that horror and continued to overcome it, or even harness it, in many different ways.

These are very moving stories. This is something you will experience for yourself, ladies and gentlemen – wherever you go in this exhibition, whichever portrait captivates you and leaves you wanting to know more.

The portraits and stories assembled by Erez Kaganovitz have already touched many people around the world: from school classes in the United States to the German Embassy in Israel; from the Washington Post, which helped publicise the project, to the Max Mannheimer Haus in Dachau, an educational institution for young people.

The portraits and stories we see and read at the exhibition have provoked many important discussions.

One such example is the picture of the forearms of Yosef Diamant’s children and grandchildren, each tattooed with the Auschwitz number of their father or grandfather.

The choice of tattoo may seem a bit macabre at first glance, evoking feelings of unease, and disbelief. Why would young people want to reproduce the dehumanisation that those numbers symbolise? The very dehumanisation we wanted and needed to leave behind?

But listening to the story behind the decision provides us with a different perspective: According to Yosef Diamant’s daughter, the tattoo always leads to important conversations.

When people ask her what the number means, she tells them the story of her father and her family – sometimes to people from Arab countries who were not aware of this past. The decision to get this tattoo has therefore become a constant source of discussion and communication, uniting people through a kind of emotional education.

Yosef’s daughter also says that the number gives her strength, as all of her problems seem of little significance when compared to her father’s story.

Yet some of the other people portrayed in the exhibition share a different experience, telling moving stories about how growing up with traumatised parents meant that their own personal problems always had to be put on the back burner. Their own feelings and experiences as children never counted, could never even be talked about.

Another photo you might linger over is that of the man in a violin workshop.

Amnon Weinstein had spent his whole life trying to escape the horror of his family’s murder. Then, one day, someone asked him to restore a violin their grandfather had played at Auschwitz. And so this became Weinstein’s life goal: to rescue and restore as many Holocaust violins as possible – violins played by Jews in the camps and ghettos – and to give them new life on the concert stage. That was Amnon Weinstein’s way of conquering his demons.

Then there is Liora Danieli, who grew up as the only child of two Holocaust survivors in what she remembers as a perpetually sad and gloomy atmosphere. Even on birthdays, she could not be happy.

Apart from her parents, her whole family had been murdered. “I never said the words grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle – there were no such persons in my life.” – It is truly heart-breaking.

It was only when she had her own family, her own children, that Liora Danieli could find the familial warmth she had been missing for so long.

There are stories upon stories to discover, and they all do one thing: They evoke empathy and humility towards those who have taken it upon themselves to address their families’ traumas in their individual way, to not just be trapped in their own trauma, or to permanently carry their parents’ trauma, but rather to fight to regain their dignity and their freedom.

The Humans of the Holocaust depicted here at the exhibition have managed to do just that.

And for that, we bow to them.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

This exhibition is a powerful response to the question we are addressing at the conference today: How we can stifle antisemitism by touching all of our hearts.

This exhibition is a vital response to the fundamental question: how to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust and the obligation it still holds for us – and must always hold – in a new era in which all stories need to be retold.

Thank you very much.