
Fifteen years ago, I embarked on this project with the deep conviction of preserving the living memory of those who survived one of humanity’s greatest tragedies. Portraits of Survivors of Nazism and the Shoah was born from encounters with individuals who not only endured the brutality of concentration and extermination camps, but also those who, through courage, ingenuity, or the help of others, managed to flee, hide, or escape the relentless persecution of the Nazi regime.
Over the years, I have dedicated my work to capturing their faces, listening to their stories, and gathering their testimonies. Each photograph, each word, each biography that forms this project carries a life marked by pain, resilience, and above all, an unbreakable will to live. To date, I have collected more than 65 portraits, biographies, and testimonies of survivors across Latin America, with the hope of honoring their memory and passing their legacy on to future generations.
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Hace quince años inicié este proyecto con la profunda convicción de preservar la memoria viva de quienes sobrevivieron a una de las mayores tragedias de la humanidad. Retratos de Sobrevivientes del Nazismo y de la Shoá nace del encuentro con aquellos que no solo enfrentaron la brutalidad de los campos de concentración y exterminio, sino también de quienes, mediante el coraje, la astucia o la ayuda de otros, lograron huir, esconderse o salvarse de la persecución implacable del régimen nazi.
A lo largo de estos años, he dedicado mi trabajo a retratar sus rostros, a escuchar sus historias y a recoger sus testimonios. Cada fotografía, cada palabra, cada biografía que compone este proyecto lleva consigo una vida atravesada por el dolor, la resistencia y, sobre todo, por una inquebrantable voluntad de vivir. Hasta hoy, he logrado reunir más de 65 retratos, biografías y testimonios de sobrevivientes en Latinoamérica, con la esperanza de honrar su memoria y de transmitir su legado a las futuras generaciones.
Portraits of Survivors of Nazism and the Shoah
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Hana Sinek de Morgenstern (Venezuela 2010)
She was born in Prague, then Czechoslovakia, on March 31, 1922. As a teenager she joined the Czech resistance. In 1944 she was taken to Theresienstadt, where she put into practice the nursing skills she had acquired in a Red Cross course in Prague. She escaped shortly before liberation, returning to the Czech capital, where she found her sister and studied nursing. With the arrival of Communism she decided to go to Paris, where she met her husband. Together they emigrated to Ecuador and passed through several South American countries until settling permanently in Venezuela in 1971.
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Eva Krausz (Venezuela 2010)
She was born on June 17, 1925 in Pécs, Hungary. As a child she lived in Budapest. When the ghetto was formed she was taken to forced labor, even though she was forced to marry, believing that married women were not taken. Through the Swiss embassy she returned to the ghetto and waited for her liberation. Thanks to the Joint she went to Germany, then to Paris and in 1947 to Venezuela.
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Elías Kuperstein (Venezuela 2010)
He was born in Novoselitsa, Romania, on May 25, 1928. In 1941 he began a difficult journey through four ghettos: his own town, Securen, Mogilev and Popivtsi. At the end of the war, with a sister and his father, he returned to his hometown and then, in 1949, emigrated to Peru, where a brother was already there. He arrived in Venezuela in 1975.
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Christiane Leider de Sternbach (Venezuela 2010)
She was born in Le Plessis Bouchard, France, on October 1, 1930. She spent her early childhood without knowing she was Jewish and when the war began her father hid her and her brother outside Paris, where they were taken in and saved by a French woman. In the middle of the war, her father picked them up and from Marseilles they embarked on a year-long journey that took them to many ports without them getting the documentation to disembark in some of them. Finally, in 1941 they were able to settle in Curaçao and in 1956 they arrived in Venezuela to restart once again, the destiny.
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Alegre Calderón de Saías (Venezuela 2010)
She was born in Salonika, Greece, on February 4, 1923. In 1943 the area of the city where her family lived was transformed into a ghetto, where they had to stay - with the exception of a sister who was married and moved to Syria - and then taken to Auschwitz. She was taken to Bergen-Belsen, and after liberation, back to her birthplace. In Salonika she was reunited with an old acquaintance whom she married. They went first to the United States and settled in Venezuela in 1956.
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Rebeca Ruso de Perli (Venezuela 2010)
She was born on January 22, 1939 in Thessaloniki, Greece. As a child, her family moved to Athens, where they were caught up in World War II. Thanks to the permanent interference of a friend, they were able to hide in several houses until the end of the conflict. In 1948 she arrived in Venezuela with her parents and her brother born in 1945. Her integration into the Jewish community has been deep and she came to occupy for eighteen years the position of executive director of the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela (CAIV).
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Magdalena Grosz de Eckstein (Venezuela 2010)
She was born in Megyaszo, Hungary, on April 19, 1926. At the age of twelve she moved to Miskolc to attend high school and in 1944 was taken with her entire family to Auschwitz, from where only three sisters survived. The liberation surprised her in Bergen-Belsen. After the war she was able to reach Budapest, but a hasty suitor made her flee to Prague and then, together with a sister, to France. In Paris she met her husband and in 1953 they arrived in Venezuela in search of peace and quiet.
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Magda Weis de Hartman (Venezuela 2010)
She was born in Olaszliska, Hungary, on December 12, 1917. Her mother died before the war when she was very young. In 1944, her father, siblings and other relatives were taken to a ghetto, and from there, almost among the last deportees, to Auschwitz. She was also in other camps: Plaszow, Breslow and finally Bergen-Belsen, where two sisters and a cousin died. At the end of the war she was able to emigrate to the United States, where she met her husband; after their marriage they settled in Venezuela.
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Robert Frank (Venezuela 2010)
He was born on August 15, 1927 in Tarnow, Poland. The house in which he lived with his parents and three siblings was left inside the ghetto area, so they were able to stay together and in less precarious conditions than many others. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1942, he was separated from his family - taken and killed in Auschwitz - and taken first to the Plaszow concentration camp, then to Mauthhausen and finally to Gunsen. At the end of the war he managed to reach his hometown, from where he began a journey that would take him to Berlin, Frankfurt, New York, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Colombia and in 1965 to Venezuela.
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Oscar Gross (Venezuela 2010)
He was born on July 3, 1926, in Cieszyn, Poland. In 1941, when the Nazis occupied the city, the ghetto was formed and he had to work under the orders of the SS. He was transferred with his family to the Dulag transit camp and separated there. He and his brother went through countless labor camps until they finally arrived in Blechhammer. In one of the so-called "Death Marches" they managed to escape, but two weeks later they were seized again by the almost dying SS and taken to Mauthausen. He was liberated and taken to Italy, from where he was able to reach Israel and then Venezuela.
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Tonka Schilling de Borgman (Venezuela 2010)
She was born in Drohobycz, Poland -today Ukraine-, on January 15, 1910. At the beginning of the persecutions, thanks to her brother-in-law, the whole family escaped and was hidden in various non-Jewish houses. She married at first marriage to Moises Horowitz, who was murdered in Boryslaw, and from this marriage was born Isodoro, her first son. After the war she remarried Abraham Borgman, with whom she had her daughter Gueña. Thanks to her sister and brother-in-law, they arrived in Venezuela in 1947.
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Lazar Zeev Bone (Venezuela 2010)
He was born in Iasi, Romania, on August 3, 1934. His father died after a pogrom in 1941, while the rest of the family survived the blizzards of the war. In 1947 he moved to Bucharest with an uncle and that same year, in an attempt to reach Palestine, he was taken to an island in Cyprus. A few months later, along with other refugee children, he arrived in Israel, where he lived in a kibbutz and did his military service. In 1995 he traveled to Venezuela to meet her and stay for a short time that has become a forever.
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Rosina Davidsohn de Schachter (Venezuela 2010)
She was born in Dorabani, Romania, on July 22, 1922. When she was five years old the family moved to Czernowitz. With war looming she married Nathan Schachter in 1940 and in 1941 they were taken to the Czernowitz ghetto and immediately deported to Mogilev, where they stayed until 1943. They managed to escape to Dorohoi but were recaptured and sent to the Viznitz ghetto. In December 1944 they fled to Bucharest, where their daughter was born. In 1950 they traveled to Israel, then to Curaçao where her husband was spiritual leader of the Ashkenazi community, and in 1960 she settled in Venezuela where she consolidated a family in which she has been blessed to see the birth of great-grandchildren.
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Ezra Heymann (Venezuela 2010)
He was born in Czernowitz, Romania, in 1928. Despite the entry of various armies into the city - Romanian, Soviet, German - his family was able to remain there until April 1945, when they moved to Bucharest. Faced with the threats of communism, as a philosophy student, he fled to Vienna and a year later to Heidelberg, where he completed his studies under the tutelage of Hans-Georg Gadamer, one of the great figures of twentieth-century philosophy. He joined his parents and brother in Montevideo, Uruguay, and stayed there until the military dictatorship pushed him to Venezuelan lands in 1974 where he developed a solid and admired career as a researcher and undergraduate and graduate teacher, having published important works and participated in national and international events.
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Sally Horowitz de Morgenstern (Venezuela 2010)
She was born on May 31, 1940 in Kitzman, Romania. He was barely one year old when the family was taken to several concentration camps: Mogilev, Martinovca, Djurin and Stepanovka. He endured numerous hardships and illnesses that did not cease after liberation. In 1945 she returned to her native country and when she was reunited with her father, after four years of separation, they had to flee to France and then to Venezuela in 1947. In Venezuela, after a difficult adaptation, she managed to find peace and forge a family together with Freddy Morgenstern.
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Reiza Kleinerman de Talmaciu
She was born on October 14, 1936 in Czernowitz, Romania, and was immediately taken to Bessarabia. In 1940 she fled to Czernowitz and was imprisoned with her family in the ghetto. Taken to Transnistria, they escaped, hiding for two years in Mogilev, in precarious conditions, with the bare minimum to survive. After a time in Dorohoi and Bucharest, fleeing communism they arrived in Venezuela in 1948, where she studied Pharmacy and made the story of her life a path retraced especially for this interview.
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Ana Reisch de Bubis (Venezuela 2010)
She was born on April 23, 1933 in Czernowitz, Romania. When the war began and the ghetto was formed, she was taken with her family, embarking on a journey that would take them through countless misfortunes to the labor camps of Otaci, Mogilev, Skazenetz and Tivriv. In order to return to Romania, her mother declared that she and her sister were orphans. The father died of typhus. She returned to Czernowitz and at the end of the war was reunited with her mother. In 1948, after a stint in Cyprus, she arrived in Israel, where she met her husband, Yehuda Bubis, with whom she settled in Venezuela in 1953.
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Nathan Schachter (Venezuela 2010)
He was born on November 9, 1920 in Czernowitz, Romania. In 1941, already married to Rosika Davidsohn, he moved with a large family group to a room in the ghetto. On November 3, 1941 they were deported to Mogilev, where they stayed until 1943 in very precarious conditions: his parents died there. They managed to escape, claiming to be from Dorohoi, but were recaptured and sent to the Viznitz ghetto. In December 1944 they fled to Bucharest, where they awaited, without anxiety, the end of the war.
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Alice Steiner de Salamon (Venezuela 2010)
She was born in Satu Mare, Romania, on September 25, 1925. In 1944, when the Germans invaded the country, the family home was left inside the ghetto and hundreds of people came to live with them. Within weeks they were sent to Auschwitz, where their mother, grandfather and younger brother died. Near the end of the war, she was part of the so-called "Death Marches", being taken to various camps until liberation.
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Alejandro Landman (Uruguay 2020)
He was born on July 26, 1933 in Stanislawow, Poland. When the war began Alexander was only 6 years old; he recounts that his childhood up to that point had been very happy. On July 26, 1941, his 8th birthday, the Nazis invaded his town. They survived in the Stanislawow Ghetto for a year, "people were dying of hunger and disease. There was a typhoid epidemic and it was very cold.
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Isaac Borojovich (Uruguay 2020)
He was born in August 1927 in a small town called Svir, which in those years was part of Poland. He lived there with his parents, his little sister Itele and a large family of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. In 1941 he began his difficult journey through the ghettos of his own city and those of Michaliszki and Vilna. He even had to hide in a cesspool for hours in order to survive.
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Larissa Mogilewski Inwentarz (Uruguay 2020)
She was born on August 1, 1932 in the city of Kharkov, former Soviet Union. For work reasons her parents moved to Odessa, where Lala - as she was called - had a happy childhood. At the age of 9 she was diagnosed with whooping cough which meant that, together with her mother, they moved for a time to her paternal grandparents' house in Kharkov. They traveled on June 22, 1941, the same day the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Larissa would only return to Odessa, as a tourist, fifty years later.
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Denny Adler (Uruguay 2020)
He was born in Breslau, Germany, now Poland, on September 4, 1938. Denny arrived in Uruguay two months after his birth, escaping from the war. His father had a store in Germany and on several occasions signs were placed on his door so that customers would not buy from him because he was Jewish. Given the situations of discrimination that his family suffered and before they began to deport Jews to concentration camps, they escaped on an Italian ship bound for Colombia.
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Ilse Simons de Lowenthal (Uruguay 2020)
She was born in Eltville, Germany on December 10, 1925. Ilse's father was the only Jewish employee of a very large company in Eltville, a small town in Germany. He was fired for being Jewish and after failing to find work because of discrimination, they moved to Frankfrut in 1935. Both parents worked as domestic servants to save the money for the 4 tickets and the Visa to emigrate to Uruguay.
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Irene Rzadzinska (Uruguay 2020)
She was born in Warsaw, Poland on September 16, 1922 to a liberal Jewish family. They did not speak Yiddish because they all wanted to attend university and at that time people who spoke Polish with an accent were not accepted. Irene, before the war started, knew that she had to escape, she could not stay in her native Poland. It was a premonition stronger than herself, and so she did, so much so that the first letter from her mother told her how lucky she was to have been able to escape. She spent many years in Russia (USSR) in a labor camp, without access to good food or soap for hygiene. She was liberated, and with the British Empire traveled to Imolia, where she had the opportunity to meet Mahatma Gandhi.
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Jeannine Brunstein Rabinow (Uruguay 2020)
She was born in Belgium, in the city of Brussels, in December 1940.
He finally managed to leave Belgium with his family and they escaped to what was supposedly free France, Vichy France, but the Nazis were there too. Living in France he became ill with dysentery and they could not call a doctor for fear of being denounced, and so all his life he has had digestive tract problems.
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Alejandro Kronfeld (Uruguay 2020)
He was born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia on May 20, 1924. In 1941 Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia. Alexander was at home with his family when they learned that they were being rounded up for deportation to a concentration camp. They managed to escape by skiing around the back of their house. They arrived later, in the city of Trieste, Italy until they took a ship to Uruguay. This country allowed him to have a happy life; to develop as a mechanic technician and to form his family.
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Charlotte de Grünberg (Uruguay 2020)
She was born in Liège, Belgium. Charlotte, her brother and parents survived the Shoah in hiding in France, traveling through much of the country, seeking refuge and hiding with her brother for more than a year in a closet. In her exile she saw many trains pass by without knowing, at first, what the final destination of the "passengers" was, which in reality was to be exterminated.