I’d like to share about a very meaningful day at the Museum, April 10, 2024. A group of survivors were asked to meet with a visiting photographer to participate in an ongoing project.
The day’s featured guest was Luigi Toscano, a German Italian photographer living in Mannheim, Germany. He is a strong-looking man with black and gray hair in a short ponytail. His arms reveal a series of neatly tattooed symbols, his face capped off with a ready, warm smile. Luigi later posted on social media: “In the last 10 years, I have been allowed to be a guest at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum many times. I am always grateful for the hospitality and the encounters I am allowed to have. Even the TV appointment with a well-known US magazine was quite exciting. ”
Luigi Toscano and me. Courtesy of Luigi Toscano
Luigi Toscano being interviewed. Courtesy of Luigi Toscano
Luigi Toscano with Holocaust survivor and Museum volunteer Frank Cohn. Courtesy of Luigi Toscano
Luigi Toscano with Holocaust survivor and Museum volunteer Peter Feigl. Courtesy of Luigi Toscano
Luigi’s Italian parents, the Toscanos, along with about 960,000 other Italian civilians, were forced by Nazi authorities to move to Germany to perform forced labor during World War II. Luigi was born after the war, in 1974. Growing up in Mainz, Germany, he was fascinated by World War II but became frustrated by a lack of information about the darkest period in Germany’s history: the Holocaust. Luigi’s German history teacher offered little information, and his textbook contained only a few photographs. So, Toscano started his own research and eventually visited Auschwitz to learn more. He was shocked. “I remember standing in front of this whole mountain of kinder shoes, and I cannot believe what had happened.”
That moving experience led Luigi to start a very ambitious Holocaust remembrance project. He is now a well-known filmmaker and photographer who has been named an Artist for Peace by UNESCO. He has authored and illustrated two volumes of Lest We Forget, which contain more than 400 images of survivors. The books and images have been exhibited globally, including in Berlin, Brussels, Geneva, Kyiv, Israel, Mannheim, New York City, Vienna, Washington, DC, and at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
Toscano’s work commemorates survivors, as knowledge about the Holocaust is alarmingly low. Distortion, denial, and public expressions of antisemitism are increasing. The placards accompanying the photographs report stories of suffering and loss but also resilience, resistance, and humanity. Toscano provides a window into the experience of the shrinking number of Holocaust survivors.
Toscano writes that “there was a small former concentration camp near my home in Mannheim.” “Every year, survivors came for visits to celebrate their liberation. I photographed and hung portraits on the walls, and as groups of survivors came to see the exhibit, more and more wanted to participate in this new project.”
The Lest We Forget exhibition has traveled the world, but Luigi especially wanted to reach “curious children in the classroom.” “We bring this exhibition to schoolyards, especially in Germany and Austria,” he writes. “In the last few months, I showed this exhibition ten times, and more and more schools ask us to bring it.”
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