EFTA June 2017<\/p>\n
There have been some wonderful developments over the past few months, new ways in which the photos of The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau<\/u>, always moving, have inspired found new audiences.<\/p>\n
A brief recap here:<\/p>\n
NINTH GRADE ALEEZA from Atlanta<\/u>
\nAleeza, a ninth grade student in Atlanta, has so identified strongly with the photos in <\/p>\n
The Last Album that she challenged herself to find a way to engage American high school students, both in her school\u2014and beyond\u2014so that they can start to understand the Holocaust in a more personal way. She has created a school project that puts herself in The Last Album<\/u> pre-war photos brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau. A compelling way to understand the link between past and present, the work of this creative ninth grader will be shared in the coming weeks in Education\/Learn section of this web site.<\/p>\n
GRADUATE STUDENT Emily Brennan<\/u> We build ourselves a Holocaust narrative in photographs\u2014of the living, of the dead, of the soon-to-be-dead. I\u2019ve stared at their faces so many times, for so long. I\u2019ve counted them, labeled them. And then something strange started to happen: they started to look back. You don\u2019t know me<\/em>, they said to me. You don\u2019t know me<\/em>. But I want to. So I imagined them. And in the end, that was the best I know how to do\u2014to hold sacred their lives, to perform their joy, their humanity<\/em>. The Talmud says, \u201cWhoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.\u201d How do we save the dead? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Her questions are intriguing. Recently, I learned that Emily has chosen the dissertation topic for her Ph.D., and that \u2018Minka\u2019 will be squarely in the middle! As Emily progresses in her work, and when the time is right, with her permission, I will be honored to share more of her work.<\/p>\n SON OF MENDEL MAGIER<\/u> SPANISH MUSEUM AND ROYAL TORONTO MUSEUM<\/u> EFTA June 2017 There have been some wonderful developments over the past few months, new ways in which the photos of The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau, always moving, have inspired found new audiences. A brief recap here: NINTH GRADE ALEEZA from Atlanta Aleeza, a ninth grade student in Atlanta, has so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fromann","category-previous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen I received a letter from Emily, she described a photo of an unidentified woman, and asked if I knew more about her. I did not\u2014but because the photos of this lovely young woman were so engaging and her smile so inviting, I understood Emily\u2019s interest. Emily had seen the first edition of The Last Album<\/u>. By the time she wrote, I had written the revised second volume and I now had a name (only that this woman\u2019s first name which was Minka). I have been deeply struck by the acuity of Emily\u2019s thinking, and by the skill with which she has written (and thought about) an unidentified photo. Here is an excerpt of a paper she wrote early in the process:<\/p>\n
\nIt was a great thrill to receive a letter from the son of Mendel Magier (whose photos will be shared in an upcoming post). He told me about his father and the woman he married, Regina Fajerman. This young couple is featured in both the first and second edition of The Last Album, but like many of photos, if I have identified the photo, I am usually not so lucky to learn all the details that followed in their lives. Thanks to Mendel\u2019s son (and first cousins and siblings), in an upcoming post, I will share their story (and their beautiful) pre- and post-war photos of Mendel, his wife, children, Mendel\u2019s brothers, and families that they each created. It is an uplifting story, illustrated with wonderful photos through multiple generations of this family that began again, after the rupture that is known as the Shoah.<\/p>\n
\nThanks to Miriam Greenbaum and Robert Jan van Pelt, who are creating two fascinating photo exhibitions in San Sebastian, Spain and also in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, they have chosen to include a group of photos from the \u2018Eyes from the Ashes\u2019 collection as well. It is a great honor to have them remember this work, which they saw decades ago, and to choose a variety of the photographs to be included in their two exhibitions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"