A journey of courage
Poster artist Yossi Lemel travels to Auschwitz to photograph himself in his father's image for new exhibition; says descendants of Holocaust survivors must preserve their memory
Lemel's purpose of such an emotional journey was to locate Block 19, the bunker that held his father, who underwent a series of medical experiments by the Nazis that ultimately kept him from the gas chambers.
On Thursday, 60 years since the camp's liberation, he plans to exhibit his personal project, photographed on German soil and featuring himself in his father's image - a man with a shaved head, dressed in a prisoner uniform bearing number 125422, in - 20 degrees Celsius weather.
However, this is not Lemel's first visit to the death camp; he last traveled to the area 10 years ago visit, on the 50th anniversary of the camp's liberation.
Following the trip, he copied his father's number onto a poster and displayed it in Hamburg, Denver and New Orleans.
Dealing with monsters
Lemel says he and his father hardly spoke about his project.
"We never specifically discussed the subject. We had many conversations about it in general," he says. "My creation is a way to reach information that was hidden...Through this work I was able to deal with unfeasibly large myths, with monsters."
He says his parents were "shocked" by his work and even fearful, as if a Pandora's Box had been reopened.
"The pain is there, it never goes away," he says. "You need to stay structured otherwise it's possible to fall apart. There are many people - survivors and their heirs - who are unable to deal with the pain. I've seen many people break down."
The messenger
Lemmel's new project is to be exhibited in Hamburg, Boston and Stockholm. He says it is especially important to him to present it in Germany and Poland.
"It's closure," he says. "I not only want to confront the German's, I want to face the Poles too. It's important for them to know that their role is to remember the past and fumble through it."
Lemmel says he feels like a messenger with the task of passing on the memory of the Holocaust to the next generation.
"I have a message for the second generation: It's on our shoulders now," he says. "We are preserving the memory and we need to teach the lessons. We must not educate to hate, but rather to teach humanism."
