About The Project
This project 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. Today, approximately 2,800 Jews live in
what was once known as the "Jerusalem of the North."
Of this number, there are only one hundred and six ghetto and camp survivors and less than
one hundred former partisans and soldiers remaining. All of those interviewed lost family
members to the Holocaust. In a few cases, they are the lone survivors among extended families
of over one hundred people to have come through alive.
The aim of the project
The 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.
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.
As in the work of Yiddish poet, Peretz Miransky, ‘everything has its melody’ and its meaning. It is
with the intention of honouring the melody, the essence of these individuals and their inimitable
life experiences that this exhibition was created.
This project 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. Today, approximately 2,800 Jews live in
what was once known as the "Jerusalem of the North."
Of this number, there are only one hundred and six ghetto and camp survivors and less than
one hundred former partisans and soldiers remaining. All of those interviewed lost family
members to the Holocaust. In a few cases, they are the lone survivors among extended families
of over one hundred people to have come through alive.
The aim of the project
The 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.
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.
As in the work of Yiddish poet, Peretz Miransky, ‘everything has its melody’ and its meaning. It is
with the intention of honouring the melody, the essence of these individuals and their inimitable
life experiences that this exhibition was created.
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