Vedem – In the Lead

I attended a very touching ceremony for the commemoration of the holocaust at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.  There were a number of holocaust survivors including my dear friend Gitta Rosenzweig, a hidden child of the holocaust.

There were also many dignitaries, councils from a number of European countries, rabbis, and a children choir.  They spoke about the Butterfly Project: A living memorial to honor the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust.  People getting together to paint as many ceramic butterflies as the number of kids killed in the Holocaust.

Vedem-the magazine from the concentration camp Terezin:

The most exciting part of the ceremony was the opening of the exhibition named Vedem.  Vedem (In the Lead) is Czech-language literary magazine that existed from 1942 to 1944 in the Terezin concentration camp, during the Holocaust. It was hand-produced by a group of boys living in the Home One barracks, led by Editor-in-chief Petr Ginz. Altogether, some 700 pages of Vedem survived World War II.  Some of these pages are displayed in this very touching exhibition.

Vedem-The creativity of children in danger:

A drawing by Petr Ginz of the planet Earth as seen from the Moon was taken by Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon onto Space Shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated upon its reentry into the earth’s atmosphere.

Moon Landscape: Memory of the Holocaust into space:

 At 16, Ginz was deported to Auschwitz, where he was gassed.

This exhibition is demonstrating the power of imagination and creativity of human beings under the most distressing conditions.  What a waste of the human potential...