RememberTheYom
RememberTheYom is a brand-new project created to help remember and honour Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day and to inspire others to create and to view meaningful related images…like this one taken on Sydney’s Bondi Beach
Joseph Pakula’s tattooed number formed by people lying on Bondi Beach Drone photo: Larnce Gold
Sydney-based Robyn Pakula asked her photographer friend Larnce Gold to help her create a meaningful image to commemorate Yom HaShoah in honour of her late father Joseph Pakula who had been an Auschwitz survivor.
Larnce Gold
Shortly after her request, Larnce whose late grandmother Dora Goldbaum was also an Auschwitz survivor, had a dream in which there was a vision of numbers written on an arm made up of sand.
Robyn Pakula
The dream inspired the subject for image to be created…the actual numbers tattooed on the late Joseph Pakula’s arm in Auschwitz, B-7656 formed by people lying in the sand.
Joseph Pakula was sent to Auschwitz II- Birkenau. It was here that he was given the number of B-7656. Six months after Joseph arrived at Auschwitz, on the 28th of January 1945, he was transported to the Dachau death camp, where he would spend the next few months of the war.
On the 29th of April 1945, the Americans arrived. They liberated the prisoners, bringing with them food and supplies. Joseph stayed on for a further month, and was finally freed on the 19th of July 1945 and eventually settled in Sydney.
Creating the human number
Larnce Gold told J-Wire: “We chose to create an image that was not only powerful for those to view it but also for those to make it, including the 28 people most of which who were direct descendants and grandchildren of survivors who lay down on the sand on Australia’s iconic Bondi Beach all dressed in black at the crack of dawn to make out Robyn’s late fathers number, B-7656 as it was photographed from the air with a drone.
Preparing to set up the numbers
The feedback afterwards from those who were lying down in the sand during the stillness of the filming was that it was an extremely powerful and moving experience and helped them to connect with their emotions and to take a moment to remember what their parents or grandparents went through many years previously and how lucky we are now to be living in such a beautiful country and area such as Bondi.
RememberTheYom encourages and challenges others to create images that are meaningful and relevant to them and that helps them process and engage in remembering the day. What triggers your memories? How will you remember and honour this occasion?
Joseph Pakula in war-time years
And now Robyn and Larnce are encouraging others around the world to get involved with RememberThe Yom.
Robyn said: “Please help in joining us to like, upload, repost & share these images and hashtag #remembertheyom to your instagram accounts and Facebook page.
If you wish to create your own images please send them to [email protected] and we will upload them to our pages.”
In 2017, Yom Hashoah falls on the night of April 23rd and the day of the 24th.
It is moral and gives respect to the Martydom of the Six Million Jews slaughtered in the Shoah and many hope the memory of their horror will not be forgotten or minimised .
And this applies to all the Genocides -the Armenian the Rwandan in 1994 in which the Superpowers did nothing though the massacres of eight hundred thousand in Rwanda extended over one hundred days .
The Jewish people are obliged also to help the Holocaust survivors who are poor and without good care and all the poor and disabled among us and in humanity in this world .