Elke persoon in deze serie is een overlevende van de Holocaust. Elk portret is voorzien van een handgeschreven boodschap. Een boodschap van verzoening, van rust, soms woede en onbegrip en maar vaak ook een boodschap vol hoop op een betere toekomst.
Fotograaf Harry Borden is 10 jaar bezig geweest om de serie van 200 portretten te maken. Hij reisde de wereld over om de overlevenden in hun eigen huis te fotograferen.
Alle foto’s zijn gebundeld in het boek ‘Survivor’, dat een zeer indrukwekkend naslagwerk is geworden vol verhalen die niet vergeten mogen worden.
Aliza Shapiro
“We were rehearsing Brahms’s lullaby in the singing lesson when the headmisstress came in and said ‘you’ve got to leave now, you’re Jewish’.”
Lidia Vago
“In Limbo: In the black hole of our / Planet Earth / Auschwits / They drove me out / When it ceased to be; / Yet who will drive / it out of me? / It still exists. / Only death will be / my exorcist.”
Fred Knoller
“I am glad to be an optimist, because that’s what kept me alive.”
Margaret Goldberger
“From danger to safety. I will always be grateful to those in Great Britain who made that possible.”
Cesia Altstock
“They took my mother and pushed me back with the butt of a gun – I knew I would never see her again.”
Deborah Brenner
“In my heart I always felt my parents would survive.”
Kurt Goldberger
“I am grateful to my parents for having the foresight to send me to England on the Kindertransport.”
Tova Friedman
“No child on this earth should have to go through what I did as a six-year-old in Auschwitz. This world has to be made safe for them. But let’s never forget the children who perished.”
Kitia Altmann
“At the end of the day, Holocaust was all about people! Good people, bad people, and the ones who were indifferent. For me, survival is an on-going process.”
Felix Fibich
“In my dancing I was trying to express a full range of human emotions from the joy of life to deep sorrow of pain and suffering of tragic life.”
Henri Obstfeld
“…and what has the world learned of all this?”
Het boek is te bestellen bij bol.com en kost € 30.
Foto’s: Harry Borden
