Identifying the children of the Holocaust: Remember me?
 |
One of the first images of the Holocaust children get is that of Anne Frank, a child on the verge of adulthood struggling to live under the horror of the Nazis, and though many accounts of the adult experience of this dark page of history have survived, the “Remember Me?” project being conducted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is searching to broaden the record of a child’s experience of the tragedy.
Images of more than 1100 children who survived were taken by European social services agencies following the war and have been posted online where they can be seen and, hopefully, identified. The project also has a Facebook page to get people involved in the project.
The effort is called "Remember Me?" — the question mark underscores the public appeal for information about the photos. But as the people in the pictures started coming forward, the title assumed a new meaning, says Jude Richter, a historian at the museum's Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center.
"Instead of being a question," he says, "it's more an imperative: 'You WILL remember me. You WILL remember what happened to me and tell it to other people when I'm gone.'"
History usually comes from government documents or accounts from adults, but "now we're seeing it from a child's eye view," Richter says. "You're hearing from a child who may have been taken away from his mother or a father who placed him in hiding. We're understanding what this means to children who weren't able to grasp what was going on."
180 children have so far been identified on the site but one thing is for sure: Once you see the pictures of the displaced children of the “Remember Me?” project, it is impossible to forget them.
 |
 |
 |
Full story at Remember Me? via AP @ Google.
