| |
 |
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| LINKS |
|
|
| |
|
|
INTRODUCTION
|
|
Before there was chaos, there was life. After the chaos, there was survival.
The lives of the men and women who agreed to be photographed here snapped off suddenly on one particular day, a different day for each one, somewhere between 1938 and 1944. It was a fracture, sudden, brutal, and it left a mark for ever on their bodies, in their emotions, and particularly in the depths of their souls. Some of them needed more than 50 years before they had the strength to return to their great catastrophe, their Shoah.
Some of them were never able to escape from their silence. They bear in secret the burden of a blame that only exists for them. They areguilty of having come back from hell, guilty of having survived there. Nobody and nothing can free them from this false feeling. The harm is done, the trauma alienates them. Others have talked, written, testified. But the catharsis is only partial. At night, they do not dream about Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, or other places with such a macabre names – they go back there. Whether they were thrown into slavery in these camps, imprisoned in the ghettos, hidden away in a clandestine existence, they all suffer the same stigmata: suffering, humiliation, the loss of their identity, and grief.
Today, having almost left this anti-world, they are the survivors of the Holocaust.
How can we show our fellow-feeling for them, how can we listen to them when, for the reasons we have just mentioned, they are so far away from us and yet so close to us ?
The object of our work was to recall, initially and in a symbolic manner, this time in the past which we are not even able to imagine, this reality beyond the bounds of civilisation. The photographs of the survivors, sitting in an environment of nothing, supplemented by short biographies and brief texts, in some ways sketch a projection into the years of chaos. As a start these stories, these personal Shoahs, help us to read in the singular the pages of plural history.
In the second part of this diptych, the gaze is directed at the present day, at the return to normality, or at least to the appearance of normality. We meet men and women, sometimes in their own, private universe, who work, are able to smile again, feel happy and at home, and take part in a daily social life that is understandable, almost banal. However, this evidence is paradoxical, and has not come about automatically: it represents Victory, often hard-fought, for human dignity and of the will to survive over a monstrous ideology sanctified by fanatical priests in human guise.
The various texts presented in connection with the photographs were written and edited by the survivors themselves. They thus communicate to us, sometimes in the person’s mother tongue, sometimes in the language with which he or she is most familiar today, an episode in their Shoah (Text 1.), and in parallel with this, a commentary relating to their present-day lives (Text 2.). If in the second part of this diptych some of these captions have no apparent link with the visual imprint of the pictures to which they relate, it is because of the wish expressed by the author of each one; often, they wanted to express in writing a particular thought or emotion which they felt it important to externalise and share. We have respected this wish, because it seemed to fit our intention exactly of letting the survivors speak for themselves, without having to go through some subjective spokesman, in order that we as spectators and readers should be able to seize a few elements of the reality of the past and the present of these involuntary proponents in a way that is impossible to say or to imagine
And, even if the testimony that we are have gathered together here only reveals an infinitely small part of a problem area which it is impossible to comprehend in its totality, these men and women, the living custodians of a fragment of our collective memory, are nevertheless allowing us a glimpse into their lives, the lives of those who are the Survivors of the Holocaust ... Today. |
| |
|
|
|
|
Jean Pierre Boesch was born in Switzerland in 1957. After he completed his studies at University, he taught ancient languages at Bienne College, Switzerland, for a period of 15 years, and today he devotes himself entirely to photography and writing renowned articles. He released "Heureux qui comme Ulysse…" (a book of 120 black and white photographs) and " … a fait un beau voyage" (a book about his travel in 225 p.) which were published by the Editions de l'Hèbe (1996). His photographs were exhibited at La Neuveville and Fribourg (Switzerland), Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Lyon, and Paris (France), and also in Tel Aviv (Israel). Jean Pierre Boesch is a citizen of Switzerland who today resides in Israel, where for the last 2 years has been working to put together the exhibition: Survivors of the Holocaust... Today. |
|
|
|
|
|
WARNING ! To visit the exhibition, you'll need the Flash 4 player. If you can't see the animation beside this text, please download the player at the following address. |
| |
|
|
|
|
The Exhibition Survivors of the Holocaust...Today
was supported by the following :
The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Bern,
SWITZERLAND - Second World War
The Federation of the Jewish Communities of Switzerland,
The Doron Foundation, Switzerland,
The Tel-Aviv Cinematheque,
Les Journées Photographiques de Bienne – Bieler Fototage
Special thanks to :
,
Mr. John Lemberger and Amcha,
Mrs. Edna Loebinger from the Massua Institute,
Mrs. Michal Gans from Beit Lohamei Haghetaot,
Mrs. Rachel Israel,
Mrs. Judith Stern,
Mrs. Sarah Allouche,
My wife, Nathalie.
The Exhibition Survivors of the Holocaust... Today
was presented at :
• The Tel-Aviv Cinematheque, Israel,
26 May – 23 June 1999
• Journées Photographiques de Bienne – Bieler Fototage, Switzerland,
4 September – 3 October 1999
• Espace Yitzhak Rabin in Brussels, Belgium,
8 December – 15 January 2000
• History Museum, Stockholm (Sweden)
26 January – 25 February 2000
|
|
|
|
|
 |
