Holocaust remembered in outdoor exhibition
An outdoor double exhibition commemorating the victims of the Holocaust through art work and family photographs opened on central Vasilissis Olgas Avenue in Athens on Friday.
Display cases lining the pedestrian section of the street show on the one side photographs from the daily life of Greek Jews before and during World War II from the Jewish Museum of Greece, and on the other photographs of tapestries by artist Artemis Alcalay that express the sense of home and family, and their loss.
Jewish Museum President Makis Matsas said that public initiatives like the exhibition contribute to ensuring that Nazi atrocities never happen again.
“Our greatest enemy is ignorance, which is also the greatest obstacle to our joint journey for building tolerant and inclusive communities,” Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis said. “Greece lost more than 80% of its pre-war Jewish population. The works of Artemis Alcalay place us in the microcosm of the Greek Jews’ home and refuge during the (Nazi) Occupation.”
Titled “The Holocaust of Greek Jews, 1941-1944” and “Artemis Alcalay: Trauma as Memory and Life,” the exhibition will remain on Vasilissis Olgas avenue throughout February. [AMNA]
