Through the Lens of Faith is Caryl Englander’s original and affecting visual archive of witnesses of the Holocaust, presented alongside conversations exploring their diverse belief systems. Englander photographed them during emotive moments of interviewing over the past three years. The resulting portraits encapsulate mnemonic tensions between an unmasterable past and the present.
Englander photographed intense discursive encounters during which writer Henri Lustiger Thaler, chief curator of the Amud Aish Memorial Museum, who has interviewed hundreds of Holocaust survivors, asked Englander’s subjects to share their stories of Auschwitz, centering on the question of faith: how did it express itself in an environment that was its complete antithesis? Lustiger Thaler’s careful arrangement of the survivors’ voices presents their complex spiritual responses and narrates the brutality of everyday life in the concentration camp. In his own words: We present stories that are very different from epic-like narratives of ‘spiritual resistance.’ We engage everyday accounts of life in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where faith functioned as a human anchor, a touchstone for expressions of identity and longings for freedom.
Through the Lens of Faith will be realized as an exhibition designed by Daniel Libeskind, the renowned architect of memorial spaces including Berlin’s Jewish Museum. The exhibition will open on 1 July 2019 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Memorial site and be displayed for the entire 75th commemorative year (2020) of the liberation of the camp. Libeskind’s moving design juxtaposes Englander’s photos against the visceral entry to Auschwitz, creating confrontation between symbols of imprisonment and freedom.
My work is a visual testament to the absolute endurance of human courage. With each person I had the privilege to meet, I felt their resilience, their hope and their joy for life. Caryl Englander
