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(New York Jewish Week) – As a docent and speaker on the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Holocaust survivor Toby Levy has spent greater than a decade sharing tales from her Polish childhood spent in hiding and deep worry.
Levy was as soon as once more on the museum in Decrease Manhattan on Wednesday, however this time to not share her reminiscences with guests. As an alternative, she and greater than 200 different survivors filed into the museum’s occasion house for “Pictures of Hope,” a strong photograph venture wherein every survivor posed for a portrait whereas holding a poster of one of many greater than 240 hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas.
“I felt a great feeling,” Levy, 90, instructed the New York Jewish Week after her portrait was taken by photographer Gillian Laub. “I felt as if I’m a really fortunate individual. So if I really feel I’m so fortunate, I’m hoping that possibly, in some way, it should attain them inside the image.”
Levy added that the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel — and the next explosion of antisemitism seen world wide since — remind her of her childhood “completely.”
“I’m again there yet again,” she stated. “That is the way it began with the Germans.”
Maya, a Holocaust survivor, poses with the kidnapped poster for Aviv Atzili whereas Gillian Laub snaps a photograph for the venture “Pictures of Hope.” (Julia Gergely)
On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that antisemitism in america has reached “historic ranges” within the wake of Israel’s warfare with Hamas.
The museum occasion was pulled collectively in simply two and a half days after it was conceived Sunday by Jack Simony, the director normal of the Auschwitz Jewish Heart Basis, a nonprofit based mostly in Poland and New York that gives Holocaust training and humanitarian help to victims of mass atrocities.
The Holocaust survivors got here collectively underneath varied auspices, together with the AJCF, in addition to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Claims Convention, the Jewish Group Heart of Larger Coney Island, Boro Park Bikur Cholim and a number of other different Jewish organizations that work with New York’s inhabitants of Holocaust survivors, which was estimated at almost 40,000 statewide as of April 2022.
The survivors heard speeches from varied elected officers, together with Jewish Metropolis Council members Eric Dinowitz, Simcha Eichenstein and Julie Menin and from Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. Additionally current had been Carsten Ruepke, the German deputy consul normal; Aviv Ezra, a senior diplomat within the Israeli consulate and Rep. Dan Goldman. Every spoke of the survivors as symbols of resilience and power for the Jewish folks and proclaimed robust help for the State of Israel in addition to the fast, pressing must return the hostages safely.
Fay Malkin, an 85-year-old who survived the Holocaust in Poland by hiding on a neighbor’s farm, instructed the New York Jewish Week that she has felt “a lot distress” for the reason that Oct. 7 assault. “An important message and the factor that can save us is power and particularly the power of Israel,” she stated.
Posters with the phrases “By no means Once more Is Now,” lined the partitions of the room, and Ruepke, the German consultant, repeated the phrase in his speech.
“I communicate to you because the consultant of a rustic that bears a historic duty for the worst possible crime, the crime dedicated by Nazi Germany: The Shoah. The systematic homicide of 6 million Jews with the goal of eradicating Jewish life from Europe,” he stated. “It’s not straightforward to place into phrases what it means to me that so many Holocaust survivors are current right here at this time in a present of solidarity with the hostages taken on October 7. You all have my deepest respect and admiration.”
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The survivors heard speeches from native electeds. Talking is Rep. Dan Goldman, (D-N.Y.) who was in Israel along with his household when the warfare broke out. (Julia Gergely)
The assembled survivors sang “Hatikvah,” the Israeli nationwide anthem, in addition to “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (“Jerusalem of Gold”). Additionally they stated “Mi Sheberach,” a prayer for therapeutic, for the hostages and injured folks.
Over the course of 4 hours, survivors had been pulled apart individually to pose for a portrait holding a poster. As they waited their flip, they listened to the speeches, schmoozed with each other and ate a catered lunch of blintzes, wraps, pastries and fruit. The afternoon concluded with a bunch portrait.
The occasion was the newest addition to an enormous international motion in search of to drawn consideration to the hostages at the same time as consideration turns to Israel’s warfare towards Hamas. “Kidnapped” posters have gone up world wide, as have billboards and public shows symbolizing the hostages’ absence, together with empty Shabbat tables, strollers and beds. Kinfolk of the hostages have additionally launched into a world tour, visiting the United Nations and elected officers in a number of international locations to press for consideration.
Simony stated the room stuffed with the survivors — the vast majority of whom are of their 80s and 90s — supplied an “indelible picture” that might add to the strain and can keep within the hearts of the Jewish folks at a time once they want it most.
What precisely will occur with the portraits is undecided as of but, organizers stated. They plan to print them and hope they are going to be hung reveals world wide, in addition to distributed throughout social media and to households of the hostages.
Seeing so many Holocaust survivors come collectively for the venture is like “air,” Jack Kliger, the president and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, instructed the New York Jewish Week. “Our survivors are our north star. At any time when I’ve a query of how we must always strategy one thing, I hearken to my teams of survivors. The common factor we heard from survivors is that they’re so pissed off they usually wish to know what they’ll do and the way they’ll elevate their voices.”
Simony concurred. “We name the era that suffered by means of the Holocaust ‘survivors,’ not ‘victims,’ for they’re those that really embody endurance, braveness, fortitude and power,” he stated in his remarks. “There isn’t a extra highly effective voice on earth to hold a message of the picture of hope.”
Levy, who lives in Manhattan Seaside, Brooklyn, stated she was “very scared” for her kids and grandchildren and added that she was nervous that the teachings of the Holocaust could now be falling on deaf ears. But she stated would stay optimistic concerning the return of the hostages, solely 5 of whom have gained freedom in additional than three weeks.
“I took the image as a result of I consider in hope,” she stated.
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