I was born in Israel. My mother and my father survived the holocaust in Lithuania. When the war broke out, they both lived in Kaunas. Kowno.

This photo, is the only photo, preserved, after lives of generations in Lithuania.

It was taken 1920 in a photographer’s studio as my grandmother’s sister left for Palestine. It was very common, in Jewish families, to take studio photos when members of the family left for Eretz Israel or the US. In the photo, my grandmother, already a widow, is sitting with her four children. My father, the late Mordechai Shubitz is the youngest boy in the front.

Being the only visual remain of the previous life in Lithuania, it became for me iconic and mythical, Its black and white colors and the face expressions of the photographed mother and children express sadness.The events of the Shoa,the Holocaust that came later, adds to the melancholic atmosphere. My father, luckily survived ghetto Kaunas and the slavery of the Dachau camps. His brother sitting next to him was murdered and the rest managed to escape to the USSR.

Kaunas was declared as the “European capital of culture 2022”. In my photo project I try to draw a line between the Jewish life in Kowno before the war to the present by using some phrases of the photographic language used in the above-mentioned inspiring photo.

I have portrayed 12 survivors, they all lived in Kaunas .They were children. I will tell their survival story. most of the photographed were hidden by courageous Lithanians. The story must be told.

 

I am bringing these heroes with me, back to Kaunas. For a visit.