*continued from above…

My Father’s Uniform

This project, formerly called “The Legacy Project” and now named after the number sewn onto my father’s concentration camp uniform, began in 1997 with a series of photographs of that uniform which he held onto after his liberation from a satellite camp of Dachau and then kept in a plastic shopping bag on a shelf in his clothing closet. I had known about the uniform from an early age and would take it out from time to time to look at, or even show to friends. It was my connection to a past that seemed like a dream. 

When I knew the uniform was going to be loaned to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC in the late 1990’s, I wanted to photograph it before it left. While photographing the uniform it struck me that it was quite small, something I had never noticed. It was not sized for the adult I knew my father to be, but for a child or a teenager, someone my height. Without thinking, I tried it on and it fit me perfectly. This was when it sank in that my father was just a slight boy of 15 when he was forced to wear this uniform. I photographed myself wearing it, and the result is the self-portrait that is now part of this photo series.  I was 36 years old at the time.

Family Portrait After Auschwitz

At that time, I also photographed the “Family Portrait After Auschwitz”, a portrait of my grandmother and 11-year-old aunt, who were both murdered at Auschwitz soon after being separated from my father and grandfather at a train station in Germany.

I shot the majority of the images that make up the earlier part of this series with my Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex medium format camera, on color film. I then stored away the developed film for years (very much like the fate of the uniform itself) showing the images to no one. They stayed in their archival binder for years, literally in the dark, until I began to print them and exhibit them in 2013.

Postcards From My Grandfather

More recently, I have created the three images using the few family photographs my grandfather saved before entering the concentration camp. He buried and hid them until their liberation.  After the war, my grandfather had them made into photo-postcards to send to relatives in the United States, and I now have them. I have looked at these images of my father's family and my grandfather's handwritten, heartbreaking messages on their backs hundreds of times since I was a little girl.

On Being Second Generation

For me the experience of being Second Generation is something that has evolved and changed as I have gotten older. What began in my 20’s and 30’s with a feeling of extreme grief and longing now quietly sits with me, sometimes with reminders of sadness and loss, but also with a sense of urgency to tell my family’s story to ensure this part of our history is neither silenced nor denied.

“82598” is part of a larger project in two parts, called "The Legacy: A Daughter's Experience of the Holocaust" and is joined by “I Thought It Would Feel Like Home”, which can be seen here. It is ongoing.

Both projects have been exhibited in educational and community center settings, providing me the opportunity to bring awareness to my father’s Holocaust history, as well as what it means to be 2G (Second Generation) and how genocide and trauma affect future generations.

To see more images and info about the "Legacy Project" you can visit its Facebook page here.
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