Shadows of Shoah exhibition opening: Arrowtown

Shadows of Shoah is an artistic educational project that communicates the gravity and significance of the Holocaust in a unique way. Using photography and original music, selected episodes from survivors’ experiences are presented in a brief, compelling format. To reach a generation for whom the Holocaust holds little relevance or significance, Shadows of Shoah strives to produce powerful and evocative art while carefully maintaining historical accuracy.

The opening of the exhibition features guest speaker, Daniel Gold, Holocaust Survivor.  Here he is with his father shortly after WW2 (left).

Daniel Gold was born in Siauliai, Lithuania in 1937. In 1941, the Germans occupied Lithuania, and the Jews of Siauliai were enclosed in a ghetto. In 1943, “Aktions” were carried out in all the ghettos of Lithuania, and all the old and weak people, as also the children were rounded up and sent to their deaths. Parents tried to hide the children, but only a very few remained undetected, out of them Daniel and a few cousins.

In the summer of 1944, a few days before liquidation of the ghetto and dispatch of all survivors to concentration camps, his aunt and uncle escaped, taking with them their two sons, a female cousin and himself. They found refuge with a Lithuanian peasant family, where they lived in hiding, under extremely cramped conditions, until their liberation by the Russian army, in late fall of 1944.

In 1946, Daniel was reunited with his father in Germany, where his father was liberated from Dachau concentration camp by the American army in 1945. Daniel’s mother perished. In 1952, they made Aliyah. In 1955, he joined the Air Force and pilots’ course, during which he was wounded, just prior to the Sinai campaign. Later, he served as pilot in the Six Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War and first Lebanon War. Altogether, he served as reserve pilot for several decades.

Daniel went into academia, attaining the position of Professor in the field of medical microbiology. Although being retired for the last eight years, he continues to teach medical students on a voluntary basis.

He has a fascinating story to tell.

The exhibition runs through until October 13.