Aliza Auerbach, Survivors, Gefen Publishing House, Jerusalem (c) 2012, ISBN 978-965-229-586-6, 208 pages, cover price not listed.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — This coffee-table book was a bit formulaic for my taste, but it does make in photographs the Talmudic point that to save one life is as if to save the world. We read the stories of Holocaust survivors — where they grew up, when the Nazis invaded their towns, where they and their immediate families were sent, who in the family lived and who died, and how they eventually made their way to Israel after World War II, married, had children, in most cases grandchildren, and in some other cases great-grandchildren.
Auerbach, the photographer, shoots several sequences for each family — individual portraits of the mother and the father; photos of mementos of the couples’ lives before and during the Holocaust, and a photography of the couple with the generations of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who followed them — each of these group shots a triumphant affirmation of Am Israel Chai , the people of Israel live.
Between family sections, Auerbach provides us a collection of photographs of snow-laden railroad tracks, obviously to suggest the winter of our despair as Jews were shipped like cattle to slaughter camps throughout Europe. In actuality, this collection of railroad tracks was photographed in Israel, but the symbolic point is made.
My own reaction was that instead of gloomy photos in muted colors of railroad tracks, the book might have been better served by a sequence of color photos of fresh spring flowers, symbolizing how new generations have arisen, brightly, colorfully, fragrantly. The story of the Holocaust is well told in the words of the survivors (or in some cases their children). In illustration of the overall theme of the book, however, I’d have preferred to see pictorial metaphors of the survivors’ successful lives and progeny.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com