Scan Photos To Tell Stories

 Photo Scanning Aides Holocaust Remembrance Project

January 27^th marked the 65^th anniversary of the liberation of the largest Nazi death camp. It also marked the fifth annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which the United Nations General Assembly designated an international holiday in 2005. On this annual day of commemoration, nations all over the world honor the millions of people who fell victim to genocide during Nazi rule. Here in the the United States, we officially commemorate the Holocaust each April,  during the Days of Remembrance, which mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. But International Holocaust Remembrance Day did not go unobserved in Washington D.C., where the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted a candle-lighting ceremony attended by the diplomatic community, Holocaust survivors, and the general public. President Obama delivered a television address, and reminded Americans of their “sacred duty to remember the cruelty” of the Holocaust.

The United Kingdom first observed its own Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27^th, 1999. The theme for this year’s commemoration was “Legacy of Hope,” which emphasized the lessons that future generations can learn from the Holocaust. Holocaust Educational Trust chairman Lord Janner of Braunstone said that having a national Holocaust Memorial Day gives the people of the United Kingdom a chance to “honor our incredible Holocaust survivors, many of whom work extremely hard telling others about what they endured during the Holocaust.”

Most Holocaust memorials rely on stories, photographs, and videos to recount the horrors that so many innocent people suffered through during the war. But there is one Holocaust remembrance project that has set itself a very different task. Centropa, a Jewish historical institute in Vienna, Austria, is interested in how Jewish people lived before and after the horrors of the Holocaust, rather than during them.

For the last decade, Centropa has been involved in an oral history project with Holocaust survivors, led by director Edward Serotta. The subjects of Centropa’s Jewish history project, who are all Holocaust survivors, have allowed Serotta and his team of researchers to scan photos, documents, family letters, and other printed memorabilia from the years before and after the Holocaust. Together, the Holocaust survivors and researchers go through the scanned photos and discuss their context – where they came from, and what they represent. The project has archived more than 22,000 scanned photos, family portraits, school report cards. What makes the project unique is that for each photo, Centropa also has a story. Serotta hopes that the project will help to preserve “the stories of an entire century, as told by those whose entire world has been destroyed.”