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On display at Germany’s embassy in Israel: portraits of Holocaust survivors that seek to reclaim their stories
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The first time Gidon Lev encountered Holocaust denial was after becoming an unwitting TikTok star at the age of 86.
“I was totally shocked. How could this be?” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about receiving dozens of comments accusing him of lying about the years in a Nazi concentration camp as a child.
“If only I was a liar,” he said. “Then I would have a father, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. I would have had a childhood.”
With half a million followers on the popular social media platform and 8.3 million likes, Lev says his message, of fighting hate and standing up for the oppressed, is a universal one. “The Holocaust is an example of just how cruel and horrible hate can get if you let it,” he said.
Now, his story is getting another showcase — on the walls of the German Embassy in Tel Aviv. Lev is one of 25 Holocaust survivors featured in a new exhibition titled Humans of the Holocaust set to open there on Wednesday, in a display timed to Yom Hashoah.
The Humans of the Holocaust exhibit at the German embassy in Tel Aviv. (Erez Kaganovitz)
“The significance of exhibiting on Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day at the German embassy in sovereign Israel is not lost on me,” said Erez Kaganovitz, the photographer behind the Humans of the Holocaust project.
Kaganovitz, who is based in Tel Aviv, said he launched Humans of the Holocaust as an offshoot of his Humans of Tel Aviv photo project several years ago after one photograph in the series went viral. (Humans of Tel Aviv itself is inspired by the landmark Humans of New York project.) The photo portrays four forearms — those of Holocaust survivor Yosef Diament, his daughter and his grandchildren — all tattooed with the same number. Diament’s family tattooed his Auschwitz inmate number as a tribute to him. Kaganovitz was shocked when commenters asked why someone would tattoo a barcode on their arm.
Around that time, Kaganovitz, the grandson of survivors who worked as a journalist and in government before turning to photography, came across a survey highlighting ignorance among young people about the Holocaust. The survey, commissioned by the Claims Conference, found that 66% of American millennials did not know that Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp.
At first, he said, the survey angered him. But then he realized that by the time he was in his late teens, and after having Holocaust education hammered into him from a young age, he didn’t want to have any connection to the Holocaust either.
“I thought if I don’t connect with it, why would someone from Lexington, Kentucky, want to engage with it?”
Kaganovitz has joined a growing coterie of photographers seeking to change the paradigm of “dark and gloomy” Holocaust-related material, of black-and-white stills, of unfathomable despair, of numbers too large to comprehend.
“I wanted to tell human stories with a global message, with optimism. Something that people could engage with,” he said, while stressing that by doing so he is not trying to whitewash or downplay the Holocaust atrocities.
That mission resonated with the German embassy. “We need to find new ways to engage the public and especially the younger generation,” German Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert said in a statement about the exhibition, which is billed as digital storytelling for a digital age.
Left; Photographer Erez Kaganovitz at work on his Humans of the Holocaust project. (Courtesy of Erez Kaganovitz); Right: Portrait of Michael Sidko, the last survivor of the Babyn Yar massacre, surrounded by bullets. (Erez Kaganovitz)
The photos are intentionally arresting, aimed at piquing people’s curiosity enough to stop them scrolling their feeds. One example is a portrait of Michael Sidko, the last survivor of the Babyn Yar massacre, whose head, which appears to be dismembered, is embedded in thousands of bullet casings. The image, which took six months to stage because of the complexity involved, aims to raise awareness about the 2 million people exterminated in the Soviet Union and Ukraine, the so-called “Holocaust by bullets.” In the text accompanying it, a quote from Sidko reads: “The sights, sounds, and smell of gunpowder still haunt me to this day.”
Another photograph features Dugo Leitner, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, clutching a yellow-gold balloon in the shape of a Jewish star with the word “Jude” on it. Leitner’s expression, like the rest of the photo, is a jarring blend of whimsy and enervation.
The pose represents one of Leitner’s attempts at reclaiming his story — along with his growing movement to make eating falafel an act of survival. “I am taking ownership of the symbol that turned me into a subhuman and turning it into an optimistic and smiling creation,” he said.
Among the images of elderly survivors, some with yarmulkes and some without, is a portrait of a woman in a black hijab with Quranic verses behind her. Leila Jabarin was born Helene Berschatzki in a concentration camp in Hungary. At 15, after fleeing with her family to Israel, she fell in love with a Muslim Arab with whom she eventually married. Jabarin, who did not share her identity with her children until they were adults, rejects particularism in her message to the world. “Hatred knows no boundaries. Once I was persecuted for being a Jew; now people are after me for being a Muslim,” she told Kaganovitz.
Lev’s own portrait features the TikTok star in front of a wall with the words “we were all once refugees” graffitied on it, a remnant of a raging dispute surrounding African migrants in Israel. Lev became a refugee at 3 years old when Hitler occupied the Sudetenland. He recalls the moment that he was forced to abandon his new red tricycle as marking his transformation into a “human without a country.” After his release from the Theresienstadt concentration camp at age 10, Lev would become a refugee in New York and later in Toronto, Canada. In 1959, he emigrated to Israel, “the only country that would have me, not as a refugee, but as a bonafide citizen.”
About 147,000 Holocaust survivors currently live in Israel, according to data released this week. Their average age is 85, and about 15,000 survivors died over the past year — a pace that is prompting innovations around the world in how the Holocaust is memorialized and taught about.
Kaganovitz is careful not to “coerce” his own knowledge about the Holocaust onto his viewers, he said. Both in their online format and at the exhibition, the photographs are accompanied by a short text to provide context and links are shared for further reading.
“I just want to bring them to the table for now. When you’re fighting for attention alongside all these celebrities that get millions of views, you have to make your content interesting enough,” he said. “Because if we don’t, it’s only a matter of time before 90% [of youth] have never heard of Auschwitz.”
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US Lawmakers Want Response After Sudan ‘Horrors’ by Paramilitaries
Senator Jim Risch, a Republican from Idaho and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, US, April 26, 2022. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS
Republican and Democratic US senators called for a strong response from President Donald Trump’s administration after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized new territory in Sudan, reportedly attacking civilians.
Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for the US to officially designate the RSF as a foreign terrorist organization.
“The horrors in Darfur’s El-Fasher were no accident — they were the RSF’s plan all along. The RSF has waged terror and committed unspeakable atrocities, genocide among them, against the Sudanese people,” he said in a statement on X on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the committee’s top Democrat, said she most likely would back such a response from Washington. Asked whether she would back an FTO designation, Shaheen told reporters, “Probably,” but added she would like to take a longer look at the issue.
Shaheen criticized the United Arab Emirates, which is accused by the Sudanese army of providing military support to the RSF. The UAE denies it. “The UAE has been an irresponsible player who has contributed to one of the worst humanitarian crises that we have on the planet right now,” she said.
In an emailed statement, the UAE Strategic Communications Department said the UAE has consistently supported efforts to achieve a ceasefire, protect civilians and ensure accountability for violations and rejected claims it provided any form of support to either warring party.
“The latest UN Panel of Experts report makes clear that there is no substantiated evidence that the UAE has provided any support to RSF, or has any involvement in the conflict,” the statement said.
The war in Sudan erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between the army and the RSF, unleashing waves of ethnic violence, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and plunging several areas into famine. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and about 13 million displaced.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its plans for designating the RSF.
In January, the administration of Trump’s Democratic predecessor, then-President Joe Biden said it determined that members of the RSF and allied militias committed genocide in Sudan and imposed sanctions on the group’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.
The RSF denied harming civilians.
Al-Fashir, the Sudanese army’s last significant holdout in the western region of Darfur, fell to the RSF on Sunday after an 18-month siege that consolidated its control of the area. Aid groups and activists have warned of the potential for ethnically motivated revenge attacks as the RSF overwhelmed the army and allied fighters, many from the Zaghawa ethnic group.
Sudanese paramilitary forces beat and shot men fleeing from a long-besieged city in Darfur after capturing it, according to an account from escapee Ikram Abdelhameed, corroborated by statements from aid officials, satellite images, and unverified social media videos.
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Afghanistan and Pakistan Restart Peace Talks in Istanbul, Sources Say
An Afghan Taliban fighter sit next to an anti-aircraft gun near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in Spin Boldak, Kandahar Province, following exchanges of fire between Pakistani and Afghan forces in Afghanistan, Oct. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Afghanistan and Pakistan have resumed peace talks in Istanbul, four sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, a day after Islamabad said the discussions had ended in failure.
Three of the sources said the nations had recommenced talks at the request of mediators Turkey and Qatar, to ensure they do not resume border clashes that have killed dozens this month.
One of the sources, a Pakistani security official, said Islamabad would press its central demand at the talks that Afghanistan take action against Islamist militants using its territory as a safe haven and to plan attacks on Pakistani soil.
“Most of the issues between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been resolved successfully and peacefully. A few demands from Pakistan need some extra time as they are difficult to be agreed upon,” said a source close to the Afghan Taliban delegation.
Islamabad accuses the Taliban of harboring the Pakistani Taliban, a separate militant group hostile to Pakistan, and allowing them to attack Pakistani troops from Afghan territory. Kabul denies this, saying it has no control over the group.
The sources declined to be named as they are not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.
The Afghan Taliban and Pakistan‘s military and foreign office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In Kabul, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, speaking at a meeting at the Interior Ministry in a video posted online, urged Pakistan to address its own internal security problems instead of creating tensions in Afghanistan, warning that doing so would “cost them dearly.”
He said Afghanistan sought peaceful engagement with all countries but would defend itself if attacked. Haqqani said the Taliban had demonstrated strength both in conflict and in dialogue, adding that Afghanistan wanted relations based on mutual respect.
TALKS AIMED TO PREVENT REPEAT OF VIOLENCE
Dozens of people were killed this month along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the worst such violence since the Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021.
The October clashes began after Pakistani airstrikes earlier in the month on Kabul, the Afghan capital, among other locations, targeting the head of the Pakistani Taliban.
The Afghan Taliban administration responded with attacks on Pakistani military posts along the length of the 2,600-km (1,600-mile) frontier, which remains closed.
Both nations agreed to a ceasefire brokered in Doha on Oct. 19, but could not find common ground in a second round of talks mediated by Turkey and Qatar in Istanbul, Afghan and Pakistani sources briefed on the issue told Reuters on Tuesday.
Clashes between the Pakistani military and the Pakistani Taliban have continued throughout the ceasefire period, with multiple deaths reported on both sides on Sunday and Wednesday.
Pakistan said on Thursday it had killed a deputy leader of the group in an operation near the Afghan border, a victory for Islamabad in the years-long insurgency it has been fighting.
Qari Amjad, who Pakistan described as a “high-value target” and who was designated as a terrorist by the United States, was killed in a clash after trying to cross into Pakistan from Afghanistan. The militant group confirmed his death.
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Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder Claims Parent Company Blocked Creation of Watermelon Ice Cream ‘For Palestine’
Tubs of ice cream are seen as a laborer works at a Ben & Jerry’s factory in Be’er Tuvia, Israel, July 20, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The anti-Israel activist and Jewish co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s revealed this week that the ice cream brand’s parent company, Unilever, blocked it from launching a watermelon flavor to express solidarity with Palestinians.
Ben Cohen said Wednesday in a post on X that Unilever and the Magnum Ice Cream Company, which operates under the British conglomerate, “stopped Ben & Jerry’s from creating a flavor for Palestine — so I’m doing it myself.” He aims to independently launch the new watermelon flavor either as an ice cream or sorbet. Watermelons have become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity because they match the colors of the Palestinian flag – red, green, black, and white.
“I’ve got a watermelon, an empty pint, and I need your help,” Cohen wrote in the post on X, before calling on supporters to help him create the flavor by submitting ideas for its name, suggesting ingredients, or designing the pint packaging. In an accompanying video, Cohen accused Israel of “occupation” in Gaza and explained that his new flavor “calls for permanent peace in Palestine and calls for repairing all the damage that was done there.”
“The scale of suffering of the Palestinian people over the last two years has been unimaginable,” he said. “The [Israel-Hamas] ceasefire is a welcome relief, but there is much more work to do to rebuild. Palestinians are still living under occupation; still recovering from years of suffering … A while back, Ben & Jerry’s tried to make a flavor to call for peace in Palestine; to stand for justice and dignity for everyone. But they weren’t allowed to. They were stopped by Unilever/Magnum.”
Unilever has owned Ben & Jerry’s since 2000. Magnum, the largest ice cream company in the world, is currently in the process of a demerger from Unilever. A spokesperson for Magnum addressed Cohen’s claims in statement given to FOX Business.
“The independent members of the Ben & Jerry’s board of directors made a proposal in this direction this summer,” the spokesperson said. “The independent members of Ben & Jerry’s Board are not, and have never been, responsible for the Ben & Jerry’s commercial strategy and execution. Recommendations are considered by Ben & Jerry’s leadership, and Ben & Jerry’s management has determined now is not the right time to invest in developing this product.”
In May, Cohen was removed from a US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing, during testimony by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after Cohen interrupted the hearing by protesting against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Earlier this year, Ben & Jerry’s claimed that Unilever violated their merger agreement by firing CEO David Stever over his social activism, which included anti-Israel social media posts.
Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield announced in September he was leaving the company after 47 years because he felt that Unilever had “silenced” the ice cream company from speaking out on social issues.