All Roads Lead to Vilnius – 26 days and counting...

Okay, things are really hotting up now. We are manically preparing last minute work for the opening of the exhibition in Vilnius on the 10 September 2009. I’m still tearing my hair out trying to get the packing list in order. We have different suppliers involved, from flight cases to actual exhibit items, and trying to amass the necessary information on weights, dimensions and packaging is driving me a little crazy. I am wary that we will need to put together a comprehensive list for custom purposes as it may be necessary to get an ATA Carnet (kinda like a passport) for the exhibits, so I am – I admit – being a little anal with the details. Virgo that I am, I relish and abhor the activity at the same time :)

So anyways, a few days ago, we realized we had run out of time on one activity. For one of the exhibition sections – there are five sections in all (you can read about what the exhibition consists of here) – the Shoah Memorial, we have 200+ bottles that need to be labeled. Quite early on, the intention was to have everyone who had participated – the artists, the designers, the team members spread across several countries (you can read about the team members here) – to write these labels by hand. But alas, it has taken a while to get the list of names and finalize this installation. So unfortunately, we’ve had to only involve the immediate team.


Trying to be as neat as I can

As I was writing my share of the labels – the name of the massacre sites and the numbers killed at each location – that while I was rushing this task, I couldn’t help but be mindful of the poignant and sad significance of what I was doing. Each location isn’t just a location – it is a burial site. And the numbers I was trying to print in as neat a hand as possible were people, lives… And then there are those places where no one even knows how many were lost. I cannot help but imagine what it is like be erased as if one had not lived at all.

Throughout this project, at various stages, I have often felt overwhelmed by the material. No matter how many times I have seen, read or heard it. It happens without me realizing it – I could be reading an interview transcript again, or watching a video clip, or looking at the narrators’ photos. The feeling passes over me like a shadow, often fleeting. It dissipates eventually but I feel something akin to a residual, lingering emptiness; it settles gently into the pit of my stomach and stays there. If someone asks me the impact of this project on me, I think I will tell them – it is like a gentle sadness that lodges somewhere in my gut. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s how it feels.

Only 26 days to go now to the full exhibition opening in Vilnius. And about a week and half to have the items shipped. Again, as in the past, whenever we prepare to go to Vilnius, I am struck by mixed feelings of setting foot in that city once more.

Surviving History documentary – 13,478 views to date

The other day, I decided to check out how many people had viewed the preview of our documentary on our distributor, Journeyman Pictures’ YouTube channel. I was really surprised to see that more than 13,000 views were registered. This does not of course include the trailer clips that have been viewed on our organisation Living Imprint’s YouTube channel, about 700+ views to date.

It’s great to see that quite a few people are interested in knowing about the Holocaust. But I must also say that it is really depressing too. It seems that most of the people who seek out documentaries like ours are fairly narrow-minded and have missed the point of Holocaust awareness altogether. They seem determined to find films like ours so they can deride the Jews and go on anti-Semitic rants for the world to see.

One comment even mentioned Madoff. But what has an American white collar criminal got to do with Holocaust survivors who survived World War II? Just because they are of the same race? By that irrational deduction, should we hate all Japanese for the crimes of their forefathers during the same war as well? Should we hate present-day Americans for the napalm bombing of the Vietnamese? Should we hate all Muslims for the murder of Daniel Pearl? The list could go on and on. It is mind boggling that such irrationality should exist and darn right frustrating!

A few comments were enlightened ones – thank God there are people who understand the point of Holocaust awareness tools like our documentary. What a great disappointment that those who missed the point altogether do not seem to understand that what happened during the Holocaust is a symptom, the tip of the ice berg if you will, of intolerance and misplaced hatred gone horribly wrong and warped. These are not just stories about the Jews. This is a reminder of what blind hatred can lead to. There is great injustice in the world, why are there so many people willing to join the mindless masses that perpetrate such conditions? Every time I bump up against such comments I am flabbergasted. Why are we so willfully blind?

If you’d like to see the short trailers, click here

If you’d like to see the Journeyman trailer, click here

If you’d like to watch the film for £1 on Journeyman’s website, click here

RIP: Margarita Civuncik, 23 June 2009

We received the sad news in late July that one of the survivors we had interviewed for this project, Margarita Civuncik, had passed away on 23 June 2009. Our condolences and prayers are with her family.

Margarita's life is a testimony to the courage of those who did not give in nor give up but found the strength and determination to persevere despite the odds.



Margarita was born Rita Tsives. She was the sixth child in a family of seven siblings. Together with the rest of her family, she was interned at Minsk ghetto and later forced into the streets during a pogrom, where convinced they would be killed, she escaped with her small daughter. She changed her name, forged identity documents, and fled, moving from village to village for the duration of the war, sometimes working, sometimes hiding, sometimes depending on the kindness of strangers. She found herself in Vilnius when the war ended and made it her home.

Her incredible experiences were recorded in her unpublished memoirs and the many poems she wrote for her children and grandchildren. Her family were her pride; she especially pointed out to us how they were a multicultural, multinational family - she told us: "The most important thing is to respect each other. It doesn’t matter what nationality a person is. I am against genocide. It is terrible… people against people. In my family, we are a mixture. We have become an international family, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish..."

We salute the amazing person Margarita was and the life she led. We are thankful for her generosity in telling us her story. The memories she shared, the gifts she gave us, her photos... these will be presented in the Surviving History: Portraits from Vilna exhibition, opening in Vilnius on 10th September 2009. We are honoured to have met Margarita, to be entrusted with passing on her experiences and the lessons she shared with us.

We salute an incredible woman, survivor, mother, grandmother.