10 September - 9 October 2009
Tolerance Center, Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum
Naugarduko str. 10/2, LT0/11141 Vilnius, Lithuania
Opening Times
Mon-Thurs 10am-6pm
Fri and Sun 10am - 4 pm
Free Admission
Surviving History: Portraits from Vilna Exhibition presents the life
stories of ten individuals who survived the Holocaust in Lithuania
where ninety-five percent of the 240,000-strong pre-war Jewish
population was annihilated. The narrators represent a rapidly
diminishing community. There are currently one hundred and six
ghetto and camp survivors in Lithuania, and a further one hundred
former partisans and soldiers. The routes of escape were narrow;
Jews who survived did so because they joined the partisans or the
army, or escaped to Russia. Or because kind strangers hid them in
basements and attics and on farms, because they slipped
unnoticed through a hole in the ghetto gate or crawled out through a
sewer, or somehow lasted in the camps until liberation. All of those
interviewed lost family members to the Holocaust. In some cases,
they are the lone survivors among extended families of over one
hundred people to have come through alive.
Relevance of the personal in historical events
This exhibition explores the point of intersection where the personal
and the collective collide. Drawing on an interdisciplinary range of
media including: photography, video, text, archival documentation,
visual biography and biographical objects, it seeks to express how
history is lived; how world events are experienced from the inside.
Dachau, escape from the Vilna ghetto, the partisan forts in the
forest, the battle of Oriole, the bombing of Minsk, the liquidation of
Glubokoe, the burning of a synagogue filled with women and
children in Ziezmariai, the pits at Ponar, all of these events are
transmitted from an individual perspective. Glimpses of the
personal – a tiny bottle of perfume tucked into a pocket before
fleeing the ghetto, a silent promise made beside a mass grave, a
child’s shoe found near a killing pit – typically absent from the
historical record, are afforded prominence here.
There are five elements to the exhibition:
Section One: Photo Exhibit
Section Two: Video Diaries
Section Three: Visual Biography Installation
Section Four: Shoah – Remembrance Memorial
Section Five: Screening of ‘Surviving History’ documentary
If you'd like to explore details of the exhibition, please visit our main
project website.
Partners:
Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum
International Historical Commission
Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Embassy of Ireland in Lithuania
British Embassy Vilnius
Tolerance Center, Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum
Naugarduko str. 10/2, LT0/11141 Vilnius, Lithuania
Opening Times
Mon-Thurs 10am-6pm
Fri and Sun 10am - 4 pm
Free Admission
Surviving History: Portraits from Vilna Exhibition presents the life
stories of ten individuals who survived the Holocaust in Lithuania
where ninety-five percent of the 240,000-strong pre-war Jewish
population was annihilated. The narrators represent a rapidly
diminishing community. There are currently one hundred and six
ghetto and camp survivors in Lithuania, and a further one hundred
former partisans and soldiers. The routes of escape were narrow;
Jews who survived did so because they joined the partisans or the
army, or escaped to Russia. Or because kind strangers hid them in
basements and attics and on farms, because they slipped
unnoticed through a hole in the ghetto gate or crawled out through a
sewer, or somehow lasted in the camps until liberation. All of those
interviewed lost family members to the Holocaust. In some cases,
they are the lone survivors among extended families of over one
hundred people to have come through alive.
Relevance of the personal in historical events
This exhibition explores the point of intersection where the personal
and the collective collide. Drawing on an interdisciplinary range of
media including: photography, video, text, archival documentation,
visual biography and biographical objects, it seeks to express how
history is lived; how world events are experienced from the inside.
Dachau, escape from the Vilna ghetto, the partisan forts in the
forest, the battle of Oriole, the bombing of Minsk, the liquidation of
Glubokoe, the burning of a synagogue filled with women and
children in Ziezmariai, the pits at Ponar, all of these events are
transmitted from an individual perspective. Glimpses of the
personal – a tiny bottle of perfume tucked into a pocket before
fleeing the ghetto, a silent promise made beside a mass grave, a
child’s shoe found near a killing pit – typically absent from the
historical record, are afforded prominence here.
There are five elements to the exhibition:
Section One: Photo Exhibit
Section Two: Video Diaries
Section Three: Visual Biography Installation
Section Four: Shoah – Remembrance Memorial
Section Five: Screening of ‘Surviving History’ documentary
If you'd like to explore details of the exhibition, please visit our main
project website.
Partners:
Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum
International Historical Commission
Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Embassy of Ireland in Lithuania
British Embassy Vilnius
Harnessing the transformational power of life stories to enlighten and educate
Surviving History: Portraits from Vilna
Exhibition, Documentary Screenings, Workshop
Exhibition, Documentary Screenings, Workshop
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We fund our activities
through gifts from private
individuals. If you'd like to
make a donation, please
use the button below. No
amount is too small,
every bit helps! Thank
you for your kind
generosity.
____________________
WHAT WE DO
Living Imprint uses the
transformational power
of life stories to enlighten
and educate. We engage
in projects which
showcase the
uniqueness and
resilience of the human
experience to raise
awareness, promote
understanding and
engender respect and
empathy.
MORE >>
____________________
Living Imprint uses the
transformational power
of life stories to enlighten
and educate. We engage
in projects which
showcase the
uniqueness and
resilience of the human
experience to raise
awareness, promote
understanding and
engender respect and
empathy.
MORE >>
____________________
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Lithuanian exhibition poster
English exhibition poster
