Yom HaShoah, 2017

Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, will begin at sundown on Sunday, April 23 and continue until sundown the next day. Before World War II, many members of the Klein family, my grandmother’s relatives, lived in the northeast corner of Hungary, near the Slovakian border. Most of them resided in little villages where cameras and photography studios were nonexistent. This family, that of my great great uncle, lived in a slightly larger town, where individuals and families could dress in their fine clothing and enter the photographer’s world of mirrored reality. So here is the only photograph I will ever own of any of my ancestors, given to me by my cousin, Melanie. All of them but one were lost in the Shoah.