Voices of family albums

This project involves the creation of facsimiles of family albums in order to provide a compelling picture of the interwar First Republic, which during the war lost one of its dominant minority groups. As a result of the war and the laws of the German Reich, this society forever lost its original identity.

Family albums are a document of the past. Their images and faces come back to life only when someone describes their secrets. Our guide to these family photographs can be an eyewitness of the interwar times, but also his or her children or grandchildren who have become bearers of family memory through past family discussions of their "mishpochology". For us, eyewitness survivors of the war are authentic witnesses of the past, and their descendants act as guardians of their legacy who can help us study contexts and relationships. All the owners of the albums are recorded on camera, and the videos become part of the museum album.

Each album is then scanned and photographed again, and the photographs graphically edited and labeled in a file that can be printed and bound as a book. These albums will then become part of the Memorial of Silence's permanent exhibition.

Selected albums will include a tablet device presenting the survivors' voices. These albums will play short recordings with eyewitness testimonies, possibly also with period film footage.

The project's final outcome will be included in the future permanent exhibition of the Memorial of Silence.