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Live to Tell

@live2tell

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We honor and share the stories of Holocaust Survivors. Project by @gigilaub
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On Monday January 27th, @Live2Tell launched its second public art installation in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Images, text narratives, and video were projected at New World Symphony and around Miami Beach. It was a special evening honoring local Survivors with their families and friends. taken in New World Symphony by @live2tell
37
2 years ago
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Thank you @cbssundaymorning for this segment. Since it aired, hundreds of Survivor stories have been submitted to @live2tell from all over the world. Each shoot and interview could not have happened without the hard work and generosity of so many individuals. It’s been a very challenging time to exist in this world. I wanted to channel my sadness and feelings of helplessness into something meaningful. I was looking and seeking out wisdom. I found that light from all of the Survivors who became part of this work. I really wanted to understand how they managed to move forward after witnessing first hand, the very worst of humanity. Hearing their stories - of enduring unimaginable horror and still going on to build beautiful, love – filled lives out of the ashes of the Holocaust – gave me the hope I so desperately needed. Live2 tell was created to honor and celebrate these extraordinary people. Their stories of resilience, strength and humanity must never be forgotten. Sharing and preserving these stories has never been more urgent. So grateful for each and every person who has worked on this and the amazing organizations we have partnered with so far, who do God’s work every day, helping the communities of Survivors and with educational outreach. Special thanks to @holocaustheroesworldwide @jccgci @museumjewishheritage @nwsofmiami @atjc_aventura @3gmiami by @live2tell
57
2 years ago
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Tonight we honor Holocaust Remembrance Day by projecting images of Survivors all across New York City. We Live to Tell. Photographs by @benfth.today @omerkesemkaplan @jone_bone and #kyleknodell taken in New York, New York by @live2tell
60
3 years ago
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Victoria Man-Estier, Holocaust Survivor | 85⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ I was born in Paris in June 1940. My parents were Polish Jews. When I was still a baby, my father received a deportation summons. He went to the police station, as he was told to do. From there, he was sent to a labor camp and later deported to Auschwitz. I wasn’t even a year old when he disappeared.⁠ ⁠ The only things I have of him are a few photographs and some documents. I managed to learn the number that was tattooed on his arm. Otherwise, I know almost nothing.⁠ ⁠ My mother and I stayed in Paris for a while. She spoke French well and made friends easily. Eventually, she met a woman whose husband was a well-known French surgeon. With their help, my mother went into hiding in the countryside, and I was placed with a gentile family. I was two years old.⁠ ⁠ The Lacours had a daughter, Nicole, who was a little older than me. We were raised together. We played in the courtyard. On Sundays, we walked into the forest and had small adventures. I didn’t know I was a hidden child. My mother visited me regularly, and despite my father’s absence, I didn’t feel unloved.⁠ ⁠ When people came to the house, the Lacours would introduce me as “the little one they keep.” The word stayed with me. What did it mean to keep someone?⁠ ⁠ After the war, my mother came back to get me. She remarried, and I was told to call my stepfather “Dad.” I couldn’t do it. He was kind to me, but that title did not belong to him.⁠ ⁠ No one ever explicitly told me what happened to my father. I still miss him, even the idea of him, with all my heart.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ ⁠Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @memorialshoahofficiel and @jewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
3
6 hours ago
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Edward Klejman, Holocaust Survivor | 87⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ I was very young when the war happened. Too young to remember most of it myself. What I know comes from what my family told me, and from what pieced together later on.⁠ ⁠ My mother was arrested in 1943. She was deported on the last convoy from Drancy. My father was taken prisoner around the same time. I don’t know the exact order of events. In those years, time didn’t feel linear.⁠ ⁠ While my parents were gone, I was left with a woman who took care of me. She brought me to Marseille and raised me as her own. She kept me alive. ⁠ ⁠ My father returned in 1945. He came back to a world that had been emptied and rearranged. Eventually, he married the woman who had protected me. In that way, my life continued—not restored, but carried forward.⁠ ⁠ And even though I don’t remember the war itself, I live with its consequences. What gives me hope is the human capacity to overcome—even after everything.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @memorialshoahofficiel and @jewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
6
7 days ago
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Bela W., Holocaust Survivor | 86⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ I was only days old when my parents fled Berlin with me.⁠ ⁠ After the war broke out, they had secured visas for travel through Manchuria to Shanghai, where members of my father’s family had already escaped. We crossed Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway. My mother later told me that if her milk had dried up during that journey, I would not have survived.⁠ ⁠ We lived in the Shanghai Ghetto under Japanese occupation, along with some 20,000 other German, Austrian, Polish, Russian, and Czech Jews. After the war, we had nowhere to go. America wouldn’t take us. We boarded an Italian cargo ship bound for Israel, but no country would allow us to dock. We floated for days off Cape Town. Jews from the city would row out to us and throw food and clothing onto the ship.⁠ ⁠ Eventually we were permitted to land in Naples, and from there we reached Israel. We lived in a tent camp in Hadera. But by 1950, the work and conditions were too harsh for my sick father, so we returned to Berlin. We moved into a single room at the Jewish Old Age Home and began again.⁠ ⁠ I married in 1962. My husband and I had three sons, and now seven grandchildren. He died in 1985, but his legacy lives on through our family.⁠ ⁠ Today, I no longer feel safe wearing a Star of David in Germany. Jews aren’t attacked openly, but we’re not protected either. I tell young people to be vigilant. When hatred is shouted, believe it.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @JewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
15
14 days ago
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Sonia Dole, Holocaust Survivor | 81⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ I was born four months after the war ended.⁠ ⁠ My parents survived it, along with my father’s sister and my mother’s brother. But the rest of my family were gone before I ever opened my eyes. ⁠ ⁠ Growing up in Slovakia in the shadow of war, life wasn’t easy. Education became my anchor. I studied philosophy and later medicine. I married a physician, and together we built a practice. In 1968, when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia, we fled to West Germany. My husband continued practicing medicine. I worked at the National Library. Eventually, we opened a second practice together. After he died, I worked at a local hospital.⁠ ⁠ I have spent my life in service, to patients, to books, to knowledge. Perhaps that is one way to combat destruction.⁠ ⁠ And yet, I’m uneasy about our future. When I see what’s happening in Ukraine and in Israel, I’m filled with fear. And I don’t know what to think or what to do with that feeling.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ ⁠Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @JewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
5
a month ago
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Ilsa Pachova, Holocaust Survivor | 97⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ I was 12 years old when the war began. We were German Jews living in Bulgaria. My father moved there after high school, mostly for better work opportunities. My mother moved there from Vienna after my father courted her on a business trip. And even though they weren’t Bulgarian, my parents grew to love their new home. They built a life in the capital city, Sofia, and raised a family there. We were comfortable, happy. Then the antisemitic laws arrived.⁠ ⁠ Every Jew in the city received a letter ordering them to leave within a week and move to the outskirts of town. We went from living in our spacious apartment to sharing a single room with two other families. One stove for all of us.⁠ ⁠ From there, my father was sent to a Bulgarian labor camp. It wasn’t a death camp, but he rarely spoke about his experiences there. Eventually, he returned, thin as a rail. ⁠ ⁠ Later, we were relocated to the village of Čirpan and lived there till the end of the war. There were about fifty Jews there, all under police supervision.⁠ ⁠ ​​One afternoon, a policeman came to our door with a list of names. Mine was on it. He said he had orders to take me.⁠ ⁠ My mother asked him to wait a moment. She went inside and returned with documents for my younger sister, Edit, who had died before the war. She handed him the papers and calmly told the policeman he had the wrong child.⁠ ⁠ I was sitting at the table, cleaning lentils. I remember starting to say she was mistaken, that those were not my papers. She turned to me and said with a voice I’d never heard before, “Be quiet. Do your work.”⁠ ⁠ The policeman hesitated, but ultimately left.⁠ ⁠ I believe my sister saved my life that day. So did my mother. And from that moment on, I understood what survival required.⁠ In life, every hardship becomes a kind of armor. It teaches you what deserves your worry and what doesn’t, and how to protect what truly matters.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @JewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
9
a month ago
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Sylvia Gold, Holocaust Survivor | 82⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ I was eight months old when my mother was arrested by the Gestapo. We were living under false papers, in hiding. Five minutes before the Gestapo came for her, my aunt had picked me up and taken me out for a walk. That’s how I survived.⁠ ⁠ My mother was only twenty-one at the time. When she was brought to the police station, a French police inspector looked at her and hesitated. He said, “But you were supposed to go to the hospital. What are you doing here?” My mother understood immediately, he had given her an opening. She said she had a terrible stomach ache. ⁠ ⁠ They took her to a hospital in Juvisy and performed a fictitious appendicitis operation. The nurses, Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul, knew what would happen to my mother if she left. They said, “You have to act crazy. Or else you’ll be deported” She listened. Each time the police came, she’d jump on the beds, screaming, unrecognizable.⁠ ⁠ Because of that, she was sent to Sainte-Anne, a psychiatric hospital in Paris. She stayed there till the end of the war.⁠ When my mother finally returned, something between us was broken. Our relationship was very different from the relationship she had with my siblings. I had been taken from her while she was breastfeeding me. For a long time, she rocked an imaginary child in her arms.⁠ ⁠ I always felt different, as if I stood slightly outside my own life. Even now, a part of me remains careful, separate, watching. ⁠ When I look back, I see that survival depends on kindness—and on self-preservation.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @memorialshoahofficiel and @jewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
5
a month ago
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Zuzana Minacova, Holocaust Survivor | 94⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ Both of my parents were Jewish doctors in Czechoslovakia. My father was brilliant and respected. He was utterly devoted to his patients until antisemitic laws stripped him of his right to practice. Overnight, our normal life ended. Daily routines were replaced with daily deportations.⁠ ⁠ To increase our chances of survival, my parents decided to hide me and my older sister, Anna, in a convent. They went into hiding themselves, but I never saw them again.⁠ ⁠ My sister and I lived a simple life in the convent, but in 1944, we were betrayed by someone in the town and reported to the Gestapo. From there, we were sent to Auschwitz.⁠ ⁠ When we reached the gates, I clung to my sister. An SS officer separated us. I was sent left, with the younger children. She was sent right, with people who could work. I began to cry hysterically. Suddenly, my cousin appeared and slapped me so hard I saw stars. The shock stopped my tears. As the two groups began to move, my cousin slipped me into the line with my sister. That act saved my life.⁠ ⁠ When we returned home in 1945, after liberation, nothing from our old world remained. I felt out of place, especially among my classmates whose concerns seemed trivial. I turned instead to photography. Through the lens, I could create order out of chaos, beauty out of destruction. ⁠ ⁠ As an adult, when memories of my childhood came rushing back, I turned to what I knew best. Art. I started a project recreating my old family photo albums that had been lost in the war. I imagined the faces of my loved ones. My mother’s soft cheeks, my father’s searching eyes.⁠ ⁠ The project became a book and an exhibition: The Reconstruction of a Family Album. Through it, I recovered something I thought was gone forever. And in making it, I found a way back to myself.⁠ ⁠ Art has taught me a lot about life but nothing as important as its ability to rebuild what history destroys.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @JewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
6
2 months ago
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Sonya Tartakovskya, Holocaust Survivor | 86⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ I was born on April 5, 1939, in Smila, what is now Ukraine. I was just three years old when the Germans invaded. That was the first time I fled war.⁠ ⁠ Back then, my family went east, all the way to Tajikistan. I was too young to understand what was happening, but I understood fear. I understood leaving. My father did not survive the Shoah.⁠ ⁠ After the war, antisemitism followed us. Quietly but persistently. I wasn’t allowed to study what I wanted because I was Jewish. I became a seamstress instead. I practiced gymnastics and played chess. These things made me strong—physically and mentally. They taught me how to focus, how to anticipate, how to keep going even when the situation felt impossible.⁠ ⁠ In 2022, war came to my life again. I was living in Irpin when Russia invaded Ukraine. For the second time, I had to flee. With the help of the Claims Conference and the Joint Distribution Committee, I was evacuated to Berlin. That’s where I live now.⁠ ⁠ I fled war as a child, and again as an old woman. But I’ve learned how to adapt, endure, and begin again. I’m still here.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @JewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
10
2 months ago
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Assia Gorban, Holocaust Survivor | 93⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ All the women in my family, including me, were born in August. So I like to say I come from a long line of lionesses. I was raised to be fierce, courageous, and strong. ⁠ ⁠ Still, I’ll never forget the fear I felt on June 22nd, 1941. My brother and I were listening to the radio in our one bedroom apartment when we heard an announcement: Germany had invaded Ukraine. The war had officially begun for us.⁠ ⁠ The next day, German soldiers arrived in our neighborhood on bicycles. They were young and polite. My grandfather spoke German and told us they were cultured, kind. We believed him.⁠ ⁠ Then everything changed. Schools closed. A ghetto was created. We were herded in like animals. The conditions there were terrible. Because my mother and I had fairer and lighter features, we were sometimes able to slip out of the ghetto to trade at the market. We bribed the Romanian soldiers at the gate with whatever we had.⁠ ⁠ One day an order came: leave the ghetto, bring all valuables, march to the train. The cars were for cattle, not people. It was September, extremely hot. The old died quickly.⁠ ⁠ The train made several stops. At each one, we were told to throw off more luggage. Eventually, we arrived at Pechora Death Camp. When we stepped off the train, my mother saw prisoners with yellow skin and swollen bellies. She whispered in my ear, “We cannot stay here.” Twice we tried to escape. On the second attempt we made it.⁠ ⁠ We hid in houses, barns, cemeteries, anywhere we could, until the war ended. We were brave, lucky.⁠ ⁠ Decades later, I sometimes ask myself ‘has the world changed?’ The truth is, I’m not sure. That’s why I tell my story. Because people forget what war does. And forgetting is how it begins again.⁠ ⁠ -⁠ ⁠ Preserving the living memory of Holocaust survivors. These portraits and testimonies are made possible through our partnership with @JewishClaimsCon by @live2tell
10
2 months ago
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