Online Campaign Raises Awareness for International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Shadows of Shoah, a New Zealand based group, has launched an online campaign to raise awareness in anticipation of United Nations Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Exhibition
Throughout January Shadows of Shoah is posting three minute Holocaust survivor stories on social media and calling on supporters to publish the stories.
“We intend the campaign to honour those who survived and as a memorial to those who perished. Most importantly we hope that our work will be effective in responding to ongoing antisemitism and of course Holocaust denial or depreciation”, said Shadows of Shoah founder, Perry Trotter. Trotter is concerned by rising levels of antisemitism, particularly in Europe. “The fact that the quenelle salute has so quickly become popular in Europe is of grave concern. It tends to support my contention that attitudes in Europe hold striking similarities to those that prevailed in the 1930’s”, he said.
Shadows of Shoah uses black and white portrait photography and original music to present selected episodes from survivors’ experiences in a brief, compelling format. The work exists online as well as in a unique touring exhibition. The exhibition was launched in January 2013 by the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Rt Hon John Key.
Examples of Shadows of Shoah’s work and details of the online campaign can be viewed here.
27 January was designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations in 2005.
Every year on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is important to remember that the Germans and their collaborators killed over a million Jewish children. These children were not forgotten in 1982 when a French singer-songwriter, Jean-Jacques Goldman, first performed his “Comme toi.” The song, “Like You,” described an ordinary little Polish girl and hinted at her extraordinary death, as a Jew, under Nazism.
The music was so beautiful and the lyrics so tactfully cryptic that Goldman’s song became a “standard” pop tune whose fundamental message of “never again” was soon lost to many. In recent years, an English-language jazz interpretation of the song has appeared here and there on the Internet, most recently, here: http://youtu.be/G04-Dq93YnQ . This English-language version subordinates the beauty of the music to greater clarity of the lyrics: there’s no doubt that the loose translation, as “So Like You,” is a Holocaust remembrance song. I listen to it in sorrow every International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Others may wish to do the same.
Visited Auckland’s magnificent war memorial museum recently and came across the Holocaust Gallery there – refer http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/visit/our-galleries/top-floor/holocaust-gallery