Eight years in the making, Survivor: My Father's Ghosts will continue until August 20, 2018 at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust at 100 South The Grove Drive in Los Angeles. Hannah retraced her father's footsteps of his stay in eight Nazi forced labor camps in Poland from 1943 until liberation May 8, 1945. Hannah visited 18 concentration camps in total.
I have traveled to Poland numerous times to see the camps he was in and the killing centers where his family were murdered. Tracing his steps to all of the camps he was forced into. Dernau, in particular, quieted me while awakening every sense. I saw the barbed wire fence that kept him prisoner, as he was close to death, I heard crickets and the ever present singing of birds that seem to sing differently in Poland, than the U.S. I wondered if he could have heard the running water from the creek surrounding the camp. Could he see the tall, sinewy trees? Making it out alive was a combination of his will, his intuition, luck and a miracle.
My father asked me to tell his story towards the end of his life. I took this as a task as well as a love letter to him. As a second generation survivor, perhaps this is a reason for my existence.
I am fascinated by the remains of the war, as a cloud of darkness from my father's past has haunted me since I was ten years old. I grabble to understand mans inhumanity to man. I understand now, that I will never truly comprehend what happened to my family but my continued sojourns to Poland, help me to see answers to my questions, in person.
Survivor: My Father's Ghosts - Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
