The Legacy Portrait Project was born out of an idea to commemorate Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) by photographing survivors together with their grandchildren. These portraits capture a moment in time, a glimpse into the individual triumph of each survivor, having prevailed over evil by building families, finding love and joy after the Holocaust. Poignantly it will be this next generation’s responsibility to share their grandparents' legacy, to be the ones left to tell the stories, keeping their grandparents' memories alive.
Six million Jewish lives were lost in the Holocaust, a tragedy unparalleled in history. We mourn those who perished and celebrate those who survived.
Pinchas and his twin sister were born in Lodz, Poland in 1932. In 1939, his family was forced into the Warsaw ghetto. After the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943, Pinchas and his family were sent to Majdanek, where his family was murdered. From Majdanek, Pinchas was sent to a work camp, to Buchenwald and then on a death march from Germany to Theresienstadt. Pinchas was liberated in 1945 by the Soviet Army. After liberation, Pinchas was taken to Britain, then lived in France, Israel, Brazil and South Africa before moving to Canada with his wife, Dorothy. Together they have children and grandchildren. Pinchas has also written a memoir called Memories in Focus.
Pictured: Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter with his grandson, Dan Gutter.
Few symbols are as toxic as the swastika. As the chief icon of Hitler and his genocidal Nazi regime, it evokes one of the worst episodes in man’s inhumanity to man. A potent emblem of racist hate and intolerance, it’s rightly associated with the antisemitic obsession of the Nazis and their extermination of six million Jews. Co-opting the swastika and other Nazi motifs in the service of a political cause shows a disturbing ignorance and disregard for history. There’s a name for that: Holocaust distortion. It trivializes the memory of those murdered for no other reason than simply being Jewish.
Ignorance is no excuse for activists denouncing democratic governments as Nazis. To compare even highly contested actions of a freely elected administration with Germany’s fascist, rabidly antisemitic regime and its extermination of six million Jews is no laughing matter; it’s Holocaust distortion. While one can of course criticize, even harshly, public officials and their policies, it shouldn’t include an analogy with the Nazi genocidal onslaught and Final Solution against Jews in Europe. Even in a heated political arena, there’s no place for this kind of comparison.
Together, let's fight Holocaust ignorance and defend the memory of the millions of victims and survivors.
Share these responses widely, and be part of the change to stop Holocaust distortion and antisemitism.
