"The Legacy: A Daughter's Experience of the Holocaust" is a body of work in two parts. It is a project that took me several years to complete but really, a lifetime to produce, culminating in exhibitions and its subsequent publication as a book.
Part I of my "Legacy Project" is The Family Heirloom. It illustrates my relationship to my father's concentration camp uniform, which he saved after his liberation from the camp at the end of WWII.
Following is an excerpt from "The Legacy: A Daughter's Experience of the Holocaust: The Family Heirloom" -
"I was first shown my father's concentration camp uniform at an early age. He went into his closet to take a plastic bag from the top shelf and inside that bag was the neatly folded uniform. I wasn't surprised to see it, but I was surprised it was being stored in a plain yellow plastic bag. The bag seemed so ordinary and its contents far too important to be stored that way.
Over the years I revisited the uniform often, taking it down to show friends, or look at by myself. It was somewhat reassuring to know it was always there - my only tangible connection to a past that seemed like a dream. It was my family heirloom, a sad secret tucked away on the top shelf of my father's closet in a plain yellow bag."
To see more images and info about the "Legacy Project" you can visit its Facebook page here.
Or visit the online bookstore to order the book in either hardcover or softcover.
Self Portrait in the Family Heirloom
The Family Heirloom No. 2
The Family Heirloom No. 6
The Family Heirloom No. 1
The Family Heirloom No. 9
The Hand-Me-Down
The Family Portrait: My Grandmother Rachel, 40, with Aunt Ida, 11, After Auschwitz
My photo essay "I Thought It Would Feel Like Home" is Part II of my "Legacy Project". It focuses on a pilgrimage I made with a small group of relatives to my father's pre-Holocaust homeland of Lithuania.
In documenting and writing about that journey I came face-to-face with the profound loss of a culture and its people, their erasure at the hands of others, and the "memories of memory" that are the only remnants I have to hold onto. This is my legacy.
To see more images and info on "The Legacy Project" you can visit its Facebook page here.
Or visit the online bookstore to order the book in either hardcover or softcover.
"Kerosene Store, Best Quality" (Yiddish translation by my father Isaak)
Translation: "Kerosene Store, Abraham Zvi"
Vilniaus Gatve in restored Old Town Kaunas, blocks away from my father's street.
"...I sensed these buildings and streets had grave stories to tell."
The Chorale Synagogue in Kaunas. My father and his family went to this synagogue before the war.
Details from the Chorale Synagogue, Kaunas.
A German record documenting my father's interment at Concentration Camp Kaufering 1, a sub-camp of Dachau.
All that remains...
A day of joy - finding the flour mill of my great-great-grandparents in Lentvaris, Lithuania.
From 2013 to 2015 I volunteered my time to Antler Ridge Wildlife Sanctuary in Western New Jersey to photograph their rescued and rehabilitated wild mammals and farm animals. Each year my photos were reproduced on calendars, greeting cards, and other printed materials that were sold to raise funds for the sanctuary.
It was a magical experience. Never had I had such close and intimate contact with wild baby animals: skunks, raccoons, opossums, fawns, groundhogs, squirrels, rabbits, as well as goats, chickens, alpacas, and their resident therapy pig. I quickly learned that photographing wild animals and barnyard animals was a completely different experience than photographing domesticated ones. They rarely make eye contact with the camera, they don't strike the perfect pose for a treat, and they never stop moving.
If it weren't for the resident vet and the sanctuary owner who became my animal wranglers, it would have been an impossible task. I was thankful for their patience, and for my good supply of memory cards I brought for each shoot!
