‘Here to Tell: Faces of Holocaust Survivors’ to debut at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton: Nov. 28

Photo of Isadore Burstyn, OBM. Photos by Marnie Jazwicki, courtesy of Holocaust and Human Rights: Remembrance and Education department, Calgary Jewish Federation.

 by Maxine Fischbein

(AJNews) – Here to Tell: Faces of Holocaust Survivors—a highly evocative photographic exhibit featuring the images and brief biographies of approximately 60 Alberta-connected Holocaust survivors—will make its much-anticipated Edmonton debut at the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) on Thursday, November 28, 2024 where it can be viewed during regular gallery hours through to Sunday, February 9, 2025.

The brainchild of Marnie Bondar and Dahlia Libin—co-chairs of the Holocaust and Human Rights: Remembrance and Education department of the Calgary Jewish Federation and each the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors— the original Here to Tell exhibit was first shown at the Glenbow at the Edison in Calgary in May 2022, attracting more than 10,000 visitors. A curated second exhibit at the Calgary Public Library in January 2023 was seen by thousands more.

Calgary-based photographer Marnie Jazwicki (formerly Burkhart)—the daughter of a Holocaust survivor—captured the images of most of the living survivors in dramatic black and white portraits that draw viewers’ attention first and foremost to the eyes that witnessed unfathomable terror and loss.

Each gray hair and every wrinkle reminds viewers that the living survivors portrayed in Here to Tell—and in the companion hardcover book where the initial 161 survivors are featured—led long and full lives. Despite the best efforts of the Nazis and their collaborators, the vast majority of the survivors not only survived but thrived.

Holocaust survivors who passed away prior to the project are captured by Jazwicki’s lens in a no-less moving way. Descendants provided vintage photos —taken as late in life as possible— of their beloved parents or grandparents. Jazwicki worked painstakingly to restore the photos which she then re-photographed in the hands of a child or grandchild. When that was not possible, other family members, friends or descendants of Holocaust survivors were invited to lend their own helping hands.

A highlight at previous Here to Tell exhibitions is the documentary film, also titled Here to Tell: Faces of Holocaust Survivors, which will once again be screened in conjunction with the exhibition at the AGA. Deeply moving, the film—produced by Bondar and Libin and made by Calgary-based videographer Fedele Arcuri— provides insight into the making of the original exhibit and includes the testimony of some of the survivors featured in the original exhibit and book.

Following the 2022 launch of the exhibit, additional survivors or their descendants came forward wanting to add images and stories. Thus, a further 52 survivor photos and stories comprised a subsequent virtual exhibit that was also well-received. That exhibit, which will be updated as new images and biographies are added, will be reprised online, most likely in the spring of 2025.

Among the Edmontonians and Edmonton-connected survivors included in the Here to Tell exhibit at the AGA are Isadore and Florence (née Garbuz) Burstyn and Alexander and Helen (née Kopolovich) Markovich, all of blessed memory.

The Burstyns, both of whom were born in Poland, were preteens when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939.

By the time Isadore was 12, his mother had died of typhus and two of his brothers had been murdered in Treblinka.

Risking instant execution, Isadore smuggled food into the Otwock Ghetto and the larger Warsaw Ghetto, until his father convinced him to escape into the countryside. There, a Polish family sheltered and protected Isadore throughout the war. Until his passing in 2019, Isadore stayed in touch with the Polish family that had acted courageously, and at huge personal risk, to save him.

Photo of Florence Burstyn, OBM. Photos by Marnie Jazwicki, courtesy of Holocaust and Human Rights: Remembrance and Education department, Calgary Jewish Federation.

Florence’s father was out of town when word was received that the Germans were coming. While rushing home to Pinsk, he was shot before he could reunite with his wife and four children. The rest of the family was spared when a Soviet soldier they had previously been forced to billet alerted them to the advance of the Nazis. Escaping eastward to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, they escaped the fate of the vast majority of Polish Jewry who were murdered in the forests and death camps of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Life was not easy in Tashkent, where Florence and her brother helped to feed their family by selling butter made by their mother. Arrested for black marketeering, they were spared when their older sister Dasha convinced authorities to imprison her instead. That courageous act put Dasha Zottenberg (who, like her sister, later settled in Edmonton) behind bars for two years.

Alexander and Helen Markovich were both born in Czechoslovakia, Alexander in Mukachevo and Helen in Vysny Studeny.

Alexander spent his early years in the largely Jewish town of Mukachevo with his parents and two brothers. Trained as an upholsterer, he worked as a policeman for a time, but his passion was playing the accordion in a band and teaching ballroom dancing.

Photo of Alexander Markovich OBM.
Photos by Marnie Jazwicki, courtesy of Holocaust and Human Rights: Remembrance and Education department, Calgary Jewish Federation.

Following the Nazi occupation, Alexander was pressed into forced labour, performing dangerous underwater bridge work, a task made even more perilous without diving equipment. After a daring escape, he found refuge in a monastery thanks to the compassion of a sympathetic Catholic priest.

In 1941, while Helen was staying with an aunt in a nearby town, the rest of her family and all their Jewish neighbours were rounded up and murdered by drowning in the Dniester River. A neighbour confiscated their home, burning their family photos.

Captured by the Nazis in 1944, Helen was forced into the Iza Ghetto. Three months later she was beaten on the head with a bat, left overnight in pouring rain and forced onto a packed cattle car on a train bound for Auschwitz. Prisoner 1012, as she was then known, suffered further humiliation, starvation and violence in forced labour at a munitions plant in Salzwedel, Germany.

The deprivations, humiliations, brutalities and losses suffered by Holocaust survivors depicted in Here to Tell, do not tell the whole story of the survivors. Rather than focusing only on what was done to them by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Shoah, great care has been taken to provide glimpses into the lives they led prior to World War II and the remarkable resilience with which they built new families and contributed to local Jewish and civic life.

Photo of Helen Markovich OBM.
Photos by Marnie Jazwicki, courtesy of Holocaust and Human Rights: Remembrance and Education department, Calgary Jewish Federation.

Both the Burstyns and the Markoviches settled in Edmonton, starting families which, in the fullness of time, grew to include grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They were engaged and cherished community members and successful businesspeople.

Passionate about Holocaust education, Isadore Burstyn frequently shared his Holocaust testimony at symposia, schools and community events, as did many of the survivors featured in Here to Tell. Among other efforts, he established the Auschwitz Awareness Society and lobbied for the Holocaust memorial monument at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton.

Those who engage with the photos and bios of these and other survivors can expect poignant glimpses into their experiences before the war and following liberation. Most arrived in Alberta with little more than the clothes on their backs, having survived the worst imaginable betrayal, savagery and loss. In many cases, they were the sole survivors of their families. Despite having endured unimaginable trauma, they chose hope over despair.

Here to Tell  is a unique educational opportunity honouring the resilience and lived experiences of Holocaust survivors and their connection to Alberta,” said AGA Executive Director and Chief Curator Catherine Crowston this past spring when the exhibit was to have opened at the AGA but was postponed due to security concerns.

“The Glenbow was able to share the exhibit with Albertans and the community in Calgary. We felt that we should do the same here in Edmonton as well,” Crowston told AJNews last month in anticipation of the revised November 28 opening.

“We chose to present this exhibition because we feel that it is important to reflect different communities in the province and to showcase works of art that tell the stories of different Albertans whose life experiences have lessons for us,” Crowston said, adding that the AGA previously featured works by an Indigenous artist focused on the residential school experience; an artist of Japanese heritage who explored the experience of Canadians of Japanese descent interned during World War II; and a black artist who depicted the history of black immigrants to Alberta in the 1910s and 1920s, who were escaping racism in the US.

When approached by Crowston, former Edmontonian and former chair of the AGA Board of Directors Barry Zalmanowitz—the son of Holocaust survivor Noach (Norman) Zalmanowitz, OBM—threw his support behind the project. Together with his wife, Barry Zalmanowitz, who now lives in BC, became a sponsor and solicited funds from other members of the Edmonton Jewish community to help defray the cost of bringing Here to Tell to the AGA.

The fundraising was successful, says Zalmanowitz, though the effort was paused following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel just over one year ago. In its wake, Diaspora Jews from around the globe focused their generosity on the existential emergency facing Israel.

Still, members of the Edmonton Jewish community stepped up to support the exhibition.

“As far as fundraising goes, it was one of the easier assignments,” recalled Zalmanowitz, who told AJNews how deeply meaningful it is for him to support the exhibit.

Zalmanowitz has twice traveled to Lakhva, the Shtetl in Belarus where his father was born and raised. His father was one of very few to survive the September 3, 1942 Lakhva Ghetto uprising, believed to be the first uprising in which armed Jews stood up to their Nazi oppressors.

Noach Zalmanowitz, who took part in the uprising, lost his parents and his sisters who were murdered by the Nazis. He immigrated to Canada in 1948, settling in Edmonton where he and his brothers Meyer and Feivel established Zal’s, a kosher butcher shop. The Zalmanowitz brothers and their shop are still fondly remembered by long-time Edmontonians.

When the original Here to Tell exhibit opened and the book was released, survivors and descendants who had not responded to the initial calls for submissions asked how they could be included. Bondar and Libin were thrilled to add their images and stories to the growing digital collection. To date, they have collected some 213 images and stories. It is their hope that the Here to Tell exhibition at the AGA will prompt Edmonton survivors and descendants to become part of this living project.

Zalmanowitz told AJNews he plans to work with his brothers to add their father’s story to Here to Tell.

“During the Edmonton run, we look forward to meeting as many Edmonton survivors and their descendants as possible. We want them to share their images and testimony so that Edmonton is well represented in the Here to Tell digital collection going forward,” Libin said.

Documenting the experiences and testimony of Holocaust survivors is more important than ever, say Libin and Bondar, adding that a recent Leger Poll revealed that 25 percent of Canadians believe the magnitude of the Holocaust is exaggerated.

“It is shocking how much Holocaust denial and distortion is out there,” Libin said.

The numbers are higher among younger Canadians, making it even more important for Here to Tell, and projects like it, to be displayed prominently in public spaces like the AGA.

“I commend the Art Gallery of Alberta for doing this…. These exhibitions are important for everybody,” said Zalmanowitz, adding that the stories of Holocaust survivors demonstrate the devastating result when any group is dehumanized.

“Every generation has to renew the memory,” Zalmanowitz said, adding that current events in the Middle East and the concomitant fallout affecting Diaspora Jewry also make it timely to consider the plight of Jews during the Shoah.

On October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorists targeted Israeli civilians in the worst attacks and murders of Jews since the Holocaust, taking an estimated 250 into captivity in Gaza where approximately 100 remain, though many are believed murdered.

While sympathy was at first expressed for the innocent victims of this unprecedented attack on Israeli soil, indifference and then outright hostility prevailed, together with an alarming increase in antisemitic acts worldwide.

“If ever there was a time for us to share the stories of Holocaust survivors with fellow Albertans, it is now,” Bondar says.

She is particularly thrilled to be taking the exhibit to Edmonton where her family has deep roots and where she herself was born.

Although, at least for the time being, most of the individuals depicted in Here to Tell are Calgary-connected, the exhibit will resonate with Edmontonians, not only due to the many ties between the two communities, but because of the universal story the exhibit reveals.

Plans for Here to Tell at the AGA include tours for school and community groups.

“We are hoping to have descendants of survivors on hand to engage the public and share their parents and grandparents’ stories,” Libin said.

“[Here to Tell] is an exhibition that has artistic merit and raises an important theme for all Canadians. The fact that it is also connected to Alberta makes this exhibition exceptional,” said Barry Zalmanowitz,

Much inspiration can be found in the way survivors built new lives here in Alberta, Zalmanowitz added.

“This is a celebration of those lives and values.”

To find out more about Here to Tell at the Art Gallery of Alberta, including gallery hours, go to www.youraga.ca.

For more information about Here to Tell, including the hardcover book, go to www.heretotell.com. Survivors or descendants who wish to become part of Here to Tell are encouraged to contact Marnie Bondar and Dahlia Libin at holocaustedu@jewishcalgary.org.

Maxine Fischbein—who was born and raised in Edmonton—is the lead writer and senior editor of Here to Tell: Faces of Holocaust Survivors. 

 

 

 

 

 

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