Survivors - Aliza Auerbach

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Résumé :
This is not just another Holocaust photo album. It is a special work that confirms optimism and vitality. It deals with the cycle of life and its wonders. It took renowned photographer Aliza Auerbach five long years to create this album. Her subjects represent Holocaust survivors from seventeen countries -- countries associated with the Holocaust, like Poland, Germany, and Lithuania, as well as such places as Libya, Tunisia, Greece, and Macedonia. The album contains twenty-nine black-and-white portraits of survivors accompanied by their autobiographies. It also shows personal objects they have kept, either from the camps and ghettos, or from their pre-war homes. Throughout the album one encounters photographs of railroad tracks in the snow, which were taken in Jerusalem but echo the trains of Europe in the 1940s. The emphasis, though, is on the new families the survivors have created in Israel. Unlike the black-and-white portraits, these photographs are in colour and spread on two pages. They show the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren that sprung from a single survivor. For example, one survivor gave birth to eleven children, from which eighty-seven grandchildren and 205 great-grandchildren were born! This moving album shows the survivors as they are today, with the emphasis on hope, on the miracle of rehabilitation, the power of survival, and the unbelievable wonder of continuity, in spite of everything.

Biographie:
Aliza Auerbach was born in Israel and studied philosophy and Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She began taking still photographs for international movie productions, then turned to photojournalism. Her work has been published in Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, New York Times, and The Times of London, among others. In 1989 she turned to art photography. Her prize-winning photographs can be found in the collections of the Israel Museum, Tel-Aviv Museum, Ein Harod Museum, the Museum of Israeli Art, the Museum on the Seam, Tel Chai Photography Museum, and in private collections all over the world. Alizas books include The Poems of Jerusalem, with Yehuda Amichai (1987), Mothers on Earth (1997), Women at Work (2003), and The Song of the Sea (2007). The album Nitzolim (Survivors, 2010) is the third part of a trilogy that includes Rishonim (Pioneers, 1990) and Olim (New Immigrants, 1992).Aliza lives in Jerusalem with her husband Gideon Ofrat, a researcher, curator, and historian of Israeli art. Their daughter, Eden Auerbach Ofrat, is a video artist.

This is, very simply, one of the most powerful books that I have ever read. By now, I have read a good many books about the Holocaust, just as you have, and so my first reaction when I pick up a new one on the subject is: What is there left to say that has not been said by now? But this book is different. It really is. Aliza Auerbach is a well known and a sensitive photographer who lives in Israel. She has already done a book about the pioneers and one about the immigrants, and so this is the third in a trilogy that tells the story of how Israel came to be. Read this book, and you will see the pictures and you will learn the life stories of people who have not only survived, but, more than that, who have prevailed! I have seldom read a book about the Holocaust that is as affirmative and as inspiring as this book is. It is a celebration of human resiliency, of the power of human beings to begin, and then to begin over again, in spite of everything. The pictures in this book are unforgettable, and the stories in it are testimonies to the courage and the capacity of human beings to live good lives, no matter what. This is a book to be treasured and to open again and again for what it teaches us about the power of willpower. -- Rabbi Jack Riemer, December 2012 A large-format picture book, Survivors is a moving photo album that is about life moreso than death. With beautiful black -and-whit e portrait s of survivor s who settled in Israel, with color photos of their extended family, this is a book that displays continuity, which was , we know, against all the odds. - Chicago Jewish Star Spring 2013 This volume is a worthwhile addition to Holocaust personal testimoniesit covers the experience of many different countries and does so with the sensitive images of a gifted photographer. - Jewish Book Council July 2013