In tandem with its annual Holocaust Memorial Day service on Monday, the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) launched 80 Objects/80 Lives, a digital exhibition featuring 80 personal objects belonging to British Holocaust survivors and refugees, explained by the survivors themselves in testimonies presented as bite-sized social media reels.

The exhibition was launched on the Holocaust Testimony UK portal, a new online database initiated by AJR and Lord Pickles, the UK Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues, which aims to provide easy access to entire unedited survivors’ interviews conducted by a variety of institutions, offering a one-stop-shop archive for Holocaust testimonials.

In 80 Objects/80 Lives, a project by the UK presidency of the International Holocaust and Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and developed in partnership with the AJR and the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, each testimony is presented in the form of a social media clip, lasting from 30 seconds to two minutes. The aim was to allow viewers an entry point to engage with the history of the Holocaust via individual, tangible anecdotes from survivors, said its curator.

“I call it the pathway into history, because to focus on one thing like a personal object makes the whole story accessible,” said said Dr Bea Lewkowicz, oral historian, director of AJR Testimony Archive and the project lead at Holocaust Testimony UK.

Lewkowicz, whose mother's fake birth certificate from Slovakia is featured in 80 Objects, noted that the objects acquired special meaning despite being everyday items, and that they provided “tangible links to history”.

Among the 80 objects presented by survivors are a Kiddush cup, a spoon, a doll, a teddy bear, a watch and, in the case of Lewkowicz’s mother Gertrud Friedmann, a false birth certificate which assured her survival.

“These objects are very poignant and they tell a story, but they are also evidence, witnesses to their keeper’s survival,” said Lewkowicz. “It's a gateway into the history of the Holocaust, which is not only death camps: it's the emigration, the Kindertransportees who came and lost all their family.”

Mari Sved with her uncle’s Schutzpass, issued by the Swedish embassy to protect Hungarian Jews from deportations. (Photo: AJR/Dr Bea Lewkowicz)

One survivor featured in the project was Peter Summerfield BEM, who escaped to the UK on one of the last trains from Berlin in 1939. His keepsake was a spoon.

“The spoon was hidden in the hand luggage and that’s why it survived,” he said. “When we reached England, we just had our hand luggage and nothing else. It’s got sentimental value for me; it is just a spoon, but it has a lot of meaning attached to it.”

Also included in the project was Helen Aronson BEM, one of only a few hundred people out of approximately 210,000 to survive the Łódź ghetto. Aronson presents a powder compact engraved with an illustration of Hansel and Gretel, given to her on her 17th birthday by her brother in the ghetto. In the reel, she explains how she used to tell the story of Hansel and Gretel to children in the ghetto orphanage but replaced the familiar house made of sweets with a house made of bread.

Liselotte Adler-Kastner with her Passover Seder Plate, which survived in Austria and was returned to the family after WW2. (Photo: AJR/Dr Bea Lewkowicz)

AJR CEO Michael Newman OBE said: “The 80 objects featured in this compelling project narrate the very personal and emotional reflections of Holocaust survivors and refugees and give us a unique insight into the lives, culture and heritage of those who experienced Nazi oppression.

“As well as preserving these stories for posterity and their descendants, the collection is an invaluable resource for Holocaust memorialisation that complements the AJR Refugee Voices archive,” Newman said.

The launch of the exhibition and Holocaust Testimony UK portal preceded AJR’s Holocaust Memorial Day service at Belsize Square Synagogue in north-west London, where attendants heard from AJR member and Auschwitz survivor Mindu Hornick MBE, Holocaust historian James Bulgin, and third generation speaker Corinne Harrison.