PAGE 12 • THE VILLAGER • February 25, 2010

Before their lives were destroyed at Auschwitz, Jews lived normal lives, like Binim Cukierman, (on the sled), who hiked and skied regularly. Photos courtesy Ann Weiss, from The Last Album ‘The Last Album’ Book, lecture recollect lives before they were destroyed in the Holocaust

By Joshua Cole these people were like before going ity, but, more importantly, she Siblings Renia and David Kohn, in the summer of 1939, weeks hat do you think off to the camps. You’ll see wed- preserves the contingency of daily before Germany attacked Poland. Ann Weiss’s “Last Album” is a about when you dings, first days of school, vaca- lives as lived and perceived then – way to memorialize lives like theirs and memories that would have read about the Ho- tions on the beach, play days in the and not only as they are retrospec- otherwise been forgotten. Weiss plans to tell some of the stories of locaust? Do you snow. tively freighted with the pathos and the photos she found at Auschwitz, March 14. Wthink about Hitler and Swasti- You’ll see people. Real people. portent we assign them now.” kas? About ghettos, concentration Weiss will share stories behind ated skeletons, we can distance by their deaths into their intimacies. camps, gas chambers and mass some of the pictures, March 14, for Pictures worth more from them. It’s a tragedy, but it’s a We remember what they wished to graves? About people hiding in the annual Fred Marcus Memorial tragedy that doesn’t have anything remember; and in the memory of silence in attics and crawl spaces? Lecture, in Glendale. than 1,000 words to do with us because we don’t look their memory, they live.” About the numbers: 6 million Eu- “I’m going to personalize this If you didn’t know where you like those people; we don’t live like Teaching and learning about the ropean Jews wiped out, and be- difficult history with some very were going, but you knew you those people,” Weiss said. “How- Holocaust is still important today. tween 5 and 12 million blacks, po- personal stories of who these peo- weren’t coming home again, what ever, those images, those devas- Even though the Nazis weren’t the litical prisoners, gypsies, gays and ple were, what mattered to them, would you take? Which photos tating images of brutality are not last group of people to attempt to other oppressed minorities killed, who they loved and how they lived. would be most memorable to you? really who these Jews were. These commit genocide against another and about as many others who were Unlike most talks about the Holo- Those types of photos are what were not really who these people group of people, the rest of the enslaved or had to flee? caust, my focus, rather than being Weiss found when she visited Aus- were. These are the images that the world hasn’t been in as much deni- If that’s all you think about the on death, is on life,” Weiss said. chwitz for the first time, in 1986. Nazis put in our minds because of al or defiance as it was in the 1930s Holocaust, then the Nazis have The stories and people are mun- Before Facebook and digital the dehumanized treatment of these and early 1940s. won, according to scholar Ann dane. There’s nothing special about cameras, photographs were on pa- people, who they did not consider The Holocaust also has parallels Weiss. The Nazis didn’t just want them, which makes the book and per and couldn’t be copied so easi- human beings, but vermin, subhu- to Haiti and how people, all people, to kill people, they wanted to de- the lecture special. ly. So somebody could also destroy man. need to respond to help people who stroy their existence. To dehuman- “Nowhere among this debris do them more easily. Which is what “The more I looked at these can’t help themselves, Weiss wrote ize them. we find traces of what bound these the Nazis did. photos and the more I looked at the in her blog. Weiss has attempted to return people together into a civilization, a When people came to concen- beauty and the lives of the photo- “I feel that, when things are at the humanity to Holocaust vic- nation, a culture,” James E. Young tration camps, the Nazis took all graphs – the people sharing beauti- their worst, that’s the time to try tims. In her book The Last Album: wrote in The Last Album introduc- of their clothes, jewelry, money ful times with their loved ones, go- to find the best that is within us,” Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz- tion. “Heaps of scattered artifacts and other belongings and sorted ing on vacations, dancing, school Weiss wrote. “And if your best con- Birkenau you’ll see hundreds of belie the interconnectedness of them. Everything other Germans outings, weddings, picnics – when nects to my best, connects to his pictures from people who were sent lives that actually made these vic- could use, they sent to Berlin, such I would look at the pictures and see best and her best – then we’re bet- to the most notorious concentration tims a people, a collective whole. as gold, jewelry and money and how their lives throbbed with vital- ter able to make a difference. The camp. But you won’t see what most The sum of these dismembered clothes for orphans. But personal ity, it became an even more power- more I learn about the Holocaust other books and other media have fragments can never approach the effects, like pictures, were put in a ful message of life, not death.” – and what evil people are capable Weiss toured the world with the of perpetrating upon other people – shown. You won’t see skeletons whole of what was lost. separate pile to be destroyed. photos and copies of the photos. In the less I understand. However, to- dressed in black and white-striped “By including the quotidian When a group of Jews were 2001, she published the first edition gether with the horror, I have been prison uniforms. You won’t see images of day-to-day life, of vaca- brought in from a Polish ghetto of her book. She regularly gives blessed to see the greatness of indi- mutilated bodies and piles of the tions, weddings and other celebra- near the German border in 1943, dead. lectures and speeches. She teaches viduals as well.” tions, Ann Weiss not only restores the photos were protected, prob- No, instead you’ll see what other teachers ways to teach this Intolerance, bigotry and abuse a measure of the victim’s human- ably smuggled out during the sort- material in school, including a happen every day with individuals ing. Those 2,400 photos are the workshop in Lakewood in Febru- and groups at school, work, neigh- only photos to survive the camps. ary to metro English and social borhoods and cities, and people Those 2,400 photos are what Weiss studies teachers. Her Web site, need to understand the choices that found in 1986 and what changed www.thelastalbum.org, and the were made during the Holocaust. her perspective on the Holocaust. connected nonprofit is another way “The Holocaust shows us a “What comes across most pow- to spread awareness, show the pho- chapter of history when evil tri- erfully in The Last Album is that in tos, tell the stories and identify the umphed over good,” Weiss said. the vast majority of these images people whose lives were cut short. “It’s my hope to help create a world there is nothing outwardly ‘Jew- “The Nazis and the other where that’s no longer possible ish’ about most of the subjects,” slaughterers of the Jews sought not because there are enough people – an anonymous reviewer wrote on a conquest, but an erasure,” Leon I’m hoping to empower people to Amazon.com. “Nothing to help us Wieseltier wrote in The Last Al- be this kind of human being – that understand why the Nazis marked bum’s forword. “We do not know there are enough people who have them. They are middle class, work- the names of the people, in these seen what happens when we don’t ing class and wealthy, and they photographs, but we know some- speak up and act so that this really look just like their neighbors (and thing just as precious, just as bid- won’t happen again to any people most probably behaved like them, ing: we know the objects of their in any place.” too). It was just this faith, no matter devotion, who and what they loy- how they practiced it, or didn’t. Just ally loved. We have been initiated [email protected] an accident of birth for some.” Weiss started her journey of put- ting names to pictures with a ques- 2010 Fred Marcus Memorial Lecture tion: What happened to you? How did you die? “The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau,”By Ann Weiss March 14, 4 p.m. at Infinity Event Center, 4400 E. Kentucky Ave, Glendale (near East Mississippi Soon, she was overwhelmed. Avenue and South Colorado Boulevard). $15 per person. No charge for students and Holocaust And after looking at the photos of survivors. RSVP by Feb. 28, www.alumni.du.edu/fredmarcus or 303-871-3097 happy lives that were unexpectedly Information on the Weiss’s project and nonprofit: shattered, she started to ask some- www.thelastalbum.org or [email protected] Many Jewish women headed businesses, including Josefina thing else: How did you live? Ann Weiss, PO Box 1136, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010 Luftig, as seen in front of her clothing store. “When we see them as emaci-