Portraits of Honor: Our Michigan Holocaust Survivors is an interactive educational exhibit of the Program
for Holocaust Survivors and Families,
a service of Jewish Senior Life of Metropolitan Detroit.
Portraits of Honor was developed in 1999 under the direction of Dr. Charles Silow, the son of Holocaust
Survivors.
Its purpose is to document the lives of Holocaust Survivors who have lived in Michigan for education and
for posterity.
Portraits of Honor is a learning tool about the lives of Survivors through their photographs, biographies,
and historical references.
Portraits of Honor: Our Michigan Holocaust Survivors
is an interactive educational exhibit of the
Program for Holocaust Survivors and Families, a service of Jewish Senior
Life of Metropolitan Detroit.
Portraits of Honor was developed in
1999
under the direction of Dr. Charles Silow, the son of Holocaust Survivors. Its purpose is to document the lives of Holocaust Survivors who have lived in Michigan for education and for posterity.
Portraits of Honor is a learning tool about the lives of Survivors through their photographs, biographies, and historical references.
As you look at the portraits of the Survivors, you will see faces of pain and suffering as
well as faces reflecting beauty, resilience, and the triumph of the human spirit.
survivors
Rosa Rusoinik
Jack Lipton
Sophie Fischel
Miriam Biegun
"Be optimistic. Look at the good side of life. Help others. Believe in G-d. I promised I would say the “Sh'ma” every night, even in Auschwitz-Birkenau."
Clara Weis
Louis Falek
Leon Lewkowicz
Aron Zygelman
Max Kozlowski
"Look what's going on. Keep up religion and education."
Lanka Ilkow
Ruth Lehman
Nathan Silow
Gloria Pesis
Thomas Pallos
"Move to Israel. I loved Israel because it was my home, especially after the Holocaust."
Ira Mechlowitz
Esther Lewkowicz
Edmund Langerman
Richard Pergament
Leo Steinmetz
"Don't be gullible. That was the problem of the Jews. We never thought it would materialize but there it was on top of us."
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World
War II.
Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews
across German-occupied Europe,
around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass
shootings; by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps;
and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno,
Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.
Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment
as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps
in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933.
We need your support
Our mission is to support
Holocaust Survivors and Families
and
add more Survivor photographs and biographies to the Project.