"Each artefact is a witness [...], a testament to lives interrupted, and a call to remember."
— Sara Bloomfield, Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
80 Objects/80 Lives is a digital exhibition which features 80 objects from filmed testimonies of British Holocaust survivors and refugees, presented as 80 individual Social Media posts. It is a project of the UK presidency of the International Holocaust and Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), and was developed in partnership with the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) and the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation.
Read more about the exhibition here.
Exhibition Team:
Curator: Dr Bea Lewkowicz
Design & Digital Assembly: Susanna Kleeman
Film Assembly: Simon Waxman
Researcher: Kristin Baumgartner
Objects like a teddy bear, a doll, a watch, or a spoon take on special meanings, when they become remnants of a lost world. A passport with the letter J, a yellow star, a bowl from Bergen-Belsen, become material witnesses of atrocities and persecution.
The 80 artefacts, photographs, documents and everyday items, create a tangible link to the lives of each testimony giver; to the before of a disrupted past and the traumatic experience of discrimination, exclusion, emigration, and survival. The objects are the carriers of memory and they connect the interviewees to lost communities, lost family members, and lost possessions.
80 Objects/80 Lives will provide an encounter with the women and men who have given testimony to the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive and the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, and with the objects they have chosen to speak about.
The chosen objects are presented in eight sections, according to broader themes: 1. Objects from Before. 2. Autograph Albums 3. Objects Persecution 4. Objects of Emigration 5. Objects of New Lives 6. Objects from Camps and Ghettos 7. Objects of Protection and Refuge 8. Objects from Liberation and Post-War.
The objects represent the very personal histories and experiences of the Jewish Holocaust survivors and refugees before, during, and at the end of the Second World War.
80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz and the end of WW2, 80 Objects/80 Lives provides a unique visual pathway into learning more about the Holocaust and learning more about the experiences of displacement, exile, and survival.
The exhibition will be launched on the 6th of December 2024 and shared through social media channels. 40 ‘object stories’ will be viewable on dedicated microsite of the new UK Holocaust Testimony Portal: 80 Objects | Holocaust Testimony, which by the 27th of January 2025 will display all 80 ‘object stories’. Each clip contains the symbol ⓘ, which, when clicked, will lead the user to the full page of the testimony giver and his/her interviews on the portal.
—Dr Bea Lewkowicz, December 4, 2024