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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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Chair of Britain’s largest arts center to step down amid antisemitism scrutiny
(JTA) — The chair of the United Kingdom’s largest arts institution will step down this fall following months of controversy over allegations of antisemitism and his social media activity related to Israel.
Misan Harriman, 48, the chair of the publicly funded Southbank Centre in central London that hosts millions of visitors per year, publicly stated earlier this week that he would not seek another term.
In a since-deleted social media post, Harriman stated on Monday that his departure had long been planned. “It’s semi-public knowledge that my term is coming to an end anyway,” he said, according to The Guardian. “I had decided way before this madness that I was going to do two terms.” He added, “I came on just after Covid, two terms, then handing the baton to whoever the next chairman will be. We will find out in due course, and of course, I am going to support that.”
The Southbank Centre said that it had been informed earlier in the year of Harriman’s decision.
In May, more than 64 MPs and peers wrote to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy asking the government to open an investigation into Harriman’s behavior, expressing concern that his public comments “have not been treated with sufficient scrutiny, particularly given their implications for public trust and community confidence,” in a publicly funded institution.
Nandy later confirmed that the Charity Commission and Arts Council England were examining complaints, alongside an internal review by the Southbank Centre.
Harriman, a photographer and self-described social activist, came to prominence in 2020, photographing a Black Lives Matter protest in London. He has overseen the Southbank Centre since 2021, but it’s only in recent months that he has faced increasing scrutiny over his public and social media comments, including referring to Israel as an “occupying power” and accusing the country of genocide.
In April, when two Jewish men were stabbed in the heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green in London, Harriman posted on social media about an alleged third victim who was Muslim. He wrote, “Wait, so there was a 3rd victim on the SAME DAY who was Muslim?! And our press isn’t reporting it? Even the Met Police didn’t mention the Muslim victim in its X post?! What is going on @metpolice_uk ?”
The Muslim victim did in fact receive coverage, and the focus on the Jewish victims stemmed from the alleged attacker’s anti-Jewish animus.
Then, following Reform UK’s gains in the May 7 local elections, Harriman shared a post that critics said compared the party’s success to the events that led to the Holocaust.
The post prompted Reform MP Robert Jenrick to respond on X, “Comparing the millions who voted Reform on Thursday to the Nazis is disgusting.”
Harriman received support from many prominent activists and artists who signed a petition in May organized by The Good Law Project. The petition accused right-wing media of running a smear campaign against Harriman.
Those who signed included activist Greta Thunberg, actors Aimee Lou Wood, Mark Ruffalo, and Susan Sarandon, director Yorgos Lanthimos and journalist Mehdi Hassan.
Following Harriman’s announcement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism praised the decision, posting on X, “Mr Harriman’s decision to step down – supposedly always his intention – is welcome. This saga has exposed a rot in the arts world. We hope that his successor will be more worthy of the post.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Chair of Britain’s largest arts center to step down amid antisemitism scrutiny appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani touts ‘Babies not Bombs’ messaging after flexing political muscle in the New York primaries
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated the victories of the progressive candidates he endorsed in New York’s Democratic primaries describing their success as a “shift in the balance of power.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the morning after the primaries, Mamdani touted the triumphs as a shift in the balance of power between “working people” and “special interests.”
Mamdani-endorsed candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez won Democratic nominations for Congress. During the press conference, the mayor repeatedly highlighted their calls to restrict U.S. military aid to Israel and redirect federal funding to domestic priorities.
Following Mamdani’s election night sweep in New York, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!”
The victories offered an early demonstration of Mamdani’s political influence beyond City Hall, as several Democratic Socialist candidates he backed, including Chevalier, defeated established Democratic incumbents in their districts.
“The working person is struggling in our city to afford basic needs,” Mamdani said, adding that Avila Chevalier’s oft-repeated slogan of investing in “Babies not Bombs,” is “the kind of conscience, the kind of clarity, the kind of conviction that has been missing in our politics for far too long.”
Mamdani responded to the president’s post on Wednesday, telling a reporter who asked whether his goal is to make America a “socialist” country that his “goal is to make America a place that every American can afford.”
When asked about federal policies that could be affected by Mamdani’s endorsed candidates, the mayor cited Valdez’s support for “foreign policy that understands human rights for all” and Lander’s commitment to co-sponsoring the Block the Bombs Act, which prohibits the sale of certain U.S.-made offensive weapons to Israel.
Mamdani also dismissed a question about whether he was concerned about how the victories would play out in November as Democrats try to win back the House.
“Every time the fight for working people takes a step forward, you will hear Republicans say that this is actually going to jeopardize the existence of that very fight,” he said.
When asked whether the election of Chevalier, who has faced scrutiny for past social media posts attacking Democrats and her appearance at an Oct. 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, could “complicate campaigns for Democrats as a whole,” Mamdani replied “No.”
“[Chevalier] often speaks about a politics of life. She speaks about ‘Babies not bombs,’” Mamdani continued. “What could be a better example of what the people of the district want to see versus what the people of the district have been forced to experience, which is tens of billions of dollars being spent at a national level to bomb children overseas, while children in our own districts are struggling.”
The post Mamdani touts ‘Babies not Bombs’ messaging after flexing political muscle in the New York primaries appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish anti-Zionist David Orkin defeats incumbent in NY Assembly primary
(New York Jewish Week) — David Orkin, a Jewish anti-Zionist attorney and democratic socialist, defeated incumbent New York State Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Orkin won State Assembly District 38, which includes parts of Queens.
Orkin, an immigrant workers’ rights attorney and union organizer, received 58.8% of the vote, while Rajkumar, who has represented the district since 2021 and is the first South Asian woman ever elected to office in the state, received 40.9%. The district covers a swath of Queens, including parts of Ridgewood, Glendale, Ozone Park, Woodhaven and Richmond Hill.
“Pro-Palestine candidates are sweeping in NYC tonight,” Jewish Voice for Peace Action wrote in a post on Instagram celebrating Orkin’s win Tuesday. “Palestine was on the ballot — and won. David will be a champion for Palestinian freedom in Albany.”
The post from JVP Action echoed a message Orkin had highlighted throughout his campaign.
“It’s so incredibly meaningful to me to be running this race as an anti-Zionist Jew, to be one of the few anti-Zionist Jewish voices that is in an elected seat in the state government,” Orkin said in an Instagram reel posted by Jewish Voice for Peace Action earlier this month.
He added that, if elected, he would be able to go in front of the state legislature and assert that “criticizing Israel for genocide, demanding an end to the occupation, demanding an end to funding war abroad is not antisemitic.”
Orkin’s victory came amid a strong night for democratic socialist candidates across New York City, including left-wing congressional candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, who also defeated establishment-backed opponents in their primaries.
While Orkin was not endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose winning endorsements of Lander, Chevalier and Valdez signaled a pro-Palestinian lurch for the party in the city with the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Nonetheless, his victory elevated a self-described anti-Zionist to the ranks of New York’s elected officials at a time when debates over Israel have become increasingly prominent within Democratic politics.
While Israel-related issues were not listed on Orkin’s platform, which centered on affordability and immigration, he repeatedly expressed his support for a “free Palestine” and attacked Rajkumar’s record of support for the Jewish state during his campaign.
“In the past several years my opponent AM Rajkumar has walked in the Israel day parade but has said NOTHING against the war in Gaza, occupation of Palestine, or Islamophobic attacks faced by the people of New York,” Orkin wrote in a May post on X.
Rajkumar, who was a close political ally of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in her campaign platform vowed to combat antisemitism.
After establishing a Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in Tucson, Arizona, in 2014, Orkin remained involved in pro-Palestinian activism as a member of the anti-Zionist activist group.
“I’ve been involved in the Jewish Palestine Solidarity Movement for 12, 13 years,” Orkin told Democratic Left last month. “I’ve dedicated part [of my] life to making sure that Jewish people are creating religious spaces outside of Zionism, and to making more space for Palestinian organizing to have an impact.”
On the campaign trail, Orkin received a host of endorsements from prominent progressive groups and lawmakers, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, JVP Action and NYC Democratic Socialists for America.
Rajkumar was endorsed by ActJew, the new nonprofit focused on combatting antisemitism, as well as the Queens Jewish Alliance and Assemblymembers Sam Berger, Kalman Yeger and Chuck Lavine.
Orkin received over $290,000 in campaign contributions for the election cycle, including over $156,000 from the office of the state comptroller, while Rajkumar received over $270,000, including $9,000 from health care executive Daniel Lowy.
“I have dedicated my life fighting for immigrants and workers, I am proud to have earned their support in this election, and I look forward to spending the rest of my life winning the beautiful and joyous lives we deserve,” Orkin said in a statement, according to QNS.
The post Jewish anti-Zionist David Orkin defeats incumbent in NY Assembly primary appeared first on The Forward.
