1/9 The Museum is frequently asked how the photographs in our collections survived the Holocaust. This #WorldPhotographyDay, explore how photos were saved in different and sometimes miraculous ways. A thread:
2/9 Sophie Rakowski kept these photos of her sons, Sam and Israel, in her shoe while imprisoned in forced labor and concentration camps. Sophie and Sam survived. Israel did not.
3/9 George Kadish secretly photographed the Kovno (Kaunas) ghetto, sometimes even snapping pictures through the buttonhole of his overcoat. He hid the negatives, which he recovered after the war.📷: George Kadish/Zvi Kadushin
4/9 Niusia Gordon kept this photograph of her parents, Basia and Moshe, while living in hiding under a false identity. They did not survive.
5/9 Wilhelm and Johanna Schischa saved their daughter Lilli’s life by sending her to England. They mailed photos of themselves in the Opole ghetto to relatives in Vienna before they were killed. Lilli received the photos after the war.
6/9 Magdalena Mermelstein’s Christian neighbors saved her family’s photos, which she recovered after surviving Auschwitz. She was the only member of her immediate family to survive.
7/9 After the war, survivor Regina Laks was able to recover copies of her family photos that had been sent to friends in Palestine. Her parents, Issac and Pola, were both killed.
8/9 Photographer Mendel Grossman took thousands of illegal photos in the Łódź ghetto. Most of the approximately 10,000 negatives he hid were retrieved by friends and his sister after the war. Mendel did not survive.📷: Beit Lohamei Haghetaot
9/9 Rosa Liebermann hid this photo of her son, Alex, in her mouth during selections at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. Alex did not survive the Holocaust.
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1/ Making reckless comparisons to the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews, for a political agenda is outrageous and deeply offensive. Those who carelessly invoke Anne Frank, the star badge, and the Nuremberg Trials exploit history and the consequences of hate.
2/ Anne Frank was one of the 1.5 million children who died during the Holocaust. Her diary and tragic story is the first encounter many people have with the Holocaust. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/art…
3/ Nazi officials used the Jewish badge to mark, segregate, and humiliate Jews as a prelude to deporting them to ghettos and killing centers. The badge was seen as a key element in their plan to persecute and destroy the Jewish population of Europe. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/art…
Karl Gorath was just 26 when his jealous lover denounced him as a gay man. He spent years in the concentration camp system until he was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945. But after liberation, he faced another set of difficulties. 1/5 #PrideMonth#Pride2020
West Germany used the Nazi version of Paragraph 175, the law criminalizing homosexuality, for decades after the war. Under that law, Karl was arrested again in the 1950s. 2/5 #PrideMonth#Pride2020
At his trial, Karl realized that he recognized the judge. The judge sentencing him to jail that day was the same man who had sent him to a concentration camp in the 1930s, for the same "crime." 3/5 #PrideMonth#Pride2020
Josephine Baker was at the peak of her fame in 1939—she had risen from a teenage vaudeville performer in America to the brightest star in Paris. But then, the Nazi regime began its stranglehold on Europe, and with it came the offer that changed her life. #BlackHistoryMonth (1/7)
A French intelligence officer, Jacques Abtey, visited Josephine and asked her to become part of his network. “The Parisians gave me their hearts,” she responded, “and I am ready to give them my life.” (2/7)
She attended events at the Italian and Japanese embassies and parties among Paris’s elite, all the while eavesdropping and looking for connections between people. She even took notes on her arms and hands, risking discovery, to make sure she remembered everything. (3/7)
Pierre Seel’s mother made this small memento out of a toy and her wedding veil while her son was imprisoned. In 1941, Pierre was arrested, tortured, and sent to a concentration camp in Alsace, France, for being a gay man. 1/5
His six-month imprisonment in the Schirmeck-Vorbrüch camp was one of hunger, hard labor, and brutal beatings. On one occasion, he was forced to watch as the SS used their dogs to kill Jo, his teenage sweetheart. 2/5
For the rest of Pierre’s life, he carried physical and emotional wounds that never healed. After he returned home, the only person in his family who was willing to hear about his time in the camp was his mother. 3/5
Karl Gorath was just 26 when his jealous lover denounced him as a gay man. He spent years in the concentration camp system until he was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945. But after liberation, he faced another set of difficulties. 1/5
West Germany used the Nazi version of Paragraph 175, the law criminalizing homosexuality, for decades after the war. Under that law, Karl was arrested again in the 1950s. 2/5
At his trial, Karl realized that he recognized the judge. The judge sentencing him to jail that day was the same man who had sent him to a concentration camp in the 1930s, for the same "crime." 3/5