The Charlotte Jewish News - February 2024 - BONUS CONTENT
Why Images of Holocaust Survivors Were Projected Onto NYC Landmarks By Julia Gergely, (New York Jewish Week), January 28, 2024 Larger-than-life images of Holocaust survivors and their stories were projected on two dozen New York City landmarks and building facades on January 27 in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Gillian Laub, the acclaimed Jewish photographer, took many of the pictures of the survivors at a Nov. 1 event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, when more than 200 Holocaust survivors gathered to raise awareness for Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas into Gaza. The images were projected on the Williamsburg and Brooklyn Bridges and the Whitney Museum, as well as several other locations across Brooklyn and Manhattan. In addition to raising awareness for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is marked on the Jan. 27 anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the campaign is also the launch of “Live2Tell,” a digital project documenting the world’s remaining Holocaust survivors through photography, video and first-person interviews. The project is being produced by Jewish actress and comedian Amy Schumer and digital storyteller Kira Pollack. Laub created the project in re-
sponse to “the recent, dramatic rise in antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world,” as well as in response to the declining number of survivors around the world, according to a press release. Today, there are some 245,000 living survivors, according to a recent demographics report from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The project aims to “elevate consciousness and spark conversation about the parallels between past and present,” the press release added. In addition to the projections, the initiative will share interviews, photos and videos of Holocaust survivors on social media and its website. “With the painful endurance of antisemitism throughout history, survivor stories need to be shared and passed down from generation to generation,” Laub said. “Hoping to foster connection and understanding, Live2Tell will help preserve survivor stories and amplify their voices through a contemporary lens. I’m extremely grateful to all the survivors for once again bearing witness and to everyone who has contributed to elevating the consciousness about the atrocities faced by the Jewish people, past and present.” According to a report in The
An image of Faye Tzippy Holand, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, projected on Brooklyn Bridge, Jan. 27, 2024, New York City. (Eugene Gologursky)
New York Times, the project was designed to minimize the chance of vandalism and did not seek a permit for its projections. For now, the Live2Tell project has only documented the testimonies and photos of survivors in New York City. But Laub, who lives in New York, intends
to release a second phase of the project in Israel, where nearly half of the world’s remaining Holocaust survivors live, later this year. “I always tell people — especially kids — us survivors won’t be around much longer,” Maritza Shelley, a 96-year-old Holocaust
survivor, said about participating in the project. “And when we go, all the witnesses will be gone. So I make them my witnesses. I say: ‘The story I’m telling you, you must remember because you are the ones who can carry it on.’”
Critic’s Account of Classical Music After the Holocaust Is Named Jewish Book of the Year By Andrew Silow-Carroll (JTA), January 25, 2024 Music critic Jeremy Eichler’s study of how classical composers made music after the Holocaust was named the book of the year by the Jewish Book Council, which will present the National Jewish Book Awards at an in-person ceremony in March. “Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance” was named the Everett Family Foundation Book of the Year and won both the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial History Award and the Holocaust Award in Memory of Ernest W. Michel. The book explores how four towering composers who lived through the Second World War transformed their experiences into what Eichler calls “intensely charged memorials in sound.” James McBride won two National Jewish Book Awards for fiction for his novel “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,” a sprawling whodunit centering on a small Pennsylvania town whose Jewish and African-American
residents find common cause in the 1920s and 1930s. McBride won the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for Fiction and The Miller Family Book Club Award in Memory of Helen Dunn Weinstein and June Keit Miller. The son of a Jewish mother and African-American father, McBride has said the book is based in part on his Jewish grandmother, who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in a small Virginia town and worked in her family’s store. The National Jewish Book Awards, in their 73rd year, are an opportunity to “bring to the fore books that may give readers one more way, perhaps a new way, to connect with their Judaism,” said Elisa Spungen Bildner, president of the Jewish Book Council, in a statement. The awards were announced live at the JCC Manhattan as part of its Books That Changed My Life festival. The winners will be feted at a March 26 event at the Upper East Side’s Bohemian National Hall.
Ruth Madievsky won the the Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction for her novel “All-Night Pharmacy,” about a troubled young woman and the Soviet Jewish refugee who purports to act as her spiritual guide. Benjamin Balint received the Biography Award in Memory of Sara Berenson Stone for his book “Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History,” an examination of the life and legacy of the enigmatic Polish writer. Sabrina Orah Mark’s memoir “Happily: A Personal History— with Fairy Tales” was awarded the Krauss Family Award in Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg for Autobiography & Memoir. The essays in the book use fairy tales as jumping off points to talk about motherhood, family and the challenges of raising mixed-race children. Elizabeth Graver’s novel “Kantika,” a 20th-century saga about a Turkish-Jewish family and their immigration to America, won the Sephardic Culture Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory
of Becky Levy. Yariv Inbar won the Hebrew Fiction in Translation Jane Weitzman Award for his book “Operation Bethlehem,” which is self-translated. The Modern Jewish Thought and Experience Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider was awarded to Jeremy Brown for his book “The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19.” The book council also presented its annual mentorship award,
named in honor of the JBC’s former executive director, Carolyn Starman Hessel, to Altie Karper, who retired this past December as editorial director of Schocken, the venerable Jewish publishing house. The judges said Karper “has been at the forefront of promoting Jewish literature, and truly upholding the history and mission of Schocken Books” while helping to “publish some of the most important Jewish books in recent history.” Other National Jewish Book Award winners include: The Nahum Sarna Memorial Scholarship Award: “Fractured Tablets: Forgetfulness and Fallibility in Late Ancient Rabbinic Culture,” by Mira Balber The Children’s Picture Book Tracy and Larry Brown Family Award: “Two New Years,” by Richard Ho, illustrated by Lynn Scurfield The Young Adult Literature Award: “The Blood Years,” by Elana K. Arnold The Middle Grade Literature (Continued on next page)
