COMING FALL 2021: STORIES OF SURVIVAL
WHEN YOU’VE LOST EVERYTHING, A SINGLE OBJECT CAN TAKE ON EXTRAORDINARY MEANING.
Stories of Survival: Object. Image. Memory is a landmark exhibit that showcases more than 60 never-before-seen personal items brought to America by Survivors of the Holocaust and genocide.
Each artifact is dramatically showcased alongside oversized photographs by renowned documentarian Jim Lommasson with handwritten responses by Survivors or their family members. The objects are as every day as a baby doll and a black suitcase and as symbolic as a young mother’s cookbook and a wedding announcement—saved by local Survivors from genocides around the world, including Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Iraq, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Syria.
The objects are a reflection of their owners’ journeys and family histories. And though the objects and memories start from very different origins, from Germany to Belgium to Armenia to Syria, common threads bind them all together. These are the threads that bind us all, the common story of moving to a new land, building a new life, yet holding on to the past. We are all connected to these stories; we have them in our own families. They are the commonality of an immigrant experience, an American experience.
Stories of Survival: Object. Image. Memory. is a project of Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center with photography by Jim Lommasson.
