Life Before the Holocaust: Portraits of Characterer by independent photographer and writer, Jono David, is a celebration of identity and personality that aims to defrost the freeze-frame of history within which Holocaust survivors are invariably portrayed. By showcasing an object, each person reveals a physical representation of a layer of their life while making a visual offering to viewers. These objects speak to joys, successes and memories that weave a life together. More specifically, they visually articulate careers, hobbies, interests, family, fashions, passions and memories. This book does not include Holocaust testimony. Rather, it's an ode to identity, personality, individuality, and love. By photographing these 106 extraordinary people with a focus on a single layer of their identity apart from the context of the Holocaust, this book offers a fresh view of who they are and a measure of how they wish to be known and remembered.
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IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Comments from Survivors featured in this eBook:
"I have carefully read your text, then examined the photos along with the short personal statements. To me, this is in a way a great Book of Life. Challenging as well as rewarding in so many ways!
To begin with - its title, a little ambiguous at first, but then, following your explanation - full of beneficial meaning, valid even beyond the Holocaust context. As you have stated, the worst things that happened to us should not define any one of us. It is our passion for life, as well as our specific contribution to it, that becomes our true spiritual identity card as well as our testament.
While the Nazi ideology and practice endeavored to outcast and annihilate, your project is in my view a specific and inspiring evidence and approval that every life is indeed a part of the Great Chain of Being. That every life matters, in terms of its individual specific weight (sic)."
--- Dina Katan Ben Zion. Tel Aviv, Israel.
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"A friend of mine shared a story about this young man, a refugee from Prague. When asked by his siblings what he wanted to have from his mother's belongings, since she had passed away some time ago, he answered: her coat!
And there I sat with the memory of my mother's coat still comforting me and you portraying this feeling [in my portrait]. What can I say? I was speechless...Isn't it wonderful?!"
— Hania Rosenberg. Stockholm, Sweden
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"I admire your photos and the concept behind them. Up to now, all the photographers tried to make us look old and unhappy, whereas, in reality, we had full and productive lives after the Holocaust.”
--- Marcel Drimer. Washington, D.C., USA.
