Episode 009 - Documenting Survivors (with Dana Arschin and Brian Marcus)

Today, January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Episode 9 of the Recognizably Jewish podcast is a deeply meaningful discussion with two people who have devoted their talents to documenting Holocaust survivors.

Dana Arschin is an award-winning journalist and the official Storyteller for the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. She is also the proud granddaughter of an Auschwitz Concentration Camp survivor, her Poppy.

Brian Marcus is a renowned event photographer and the third-generation leadership of Fred Marcus Photography. He’s the co-author, with June Hersh, of the book Still Here: Inspiration From Survivors & Liberators of the Holocaust. Fred Marcus, Brian’s grandfather and the eponymous founder of the studio, was a survivor of Buchenwald.

I talked to Dana and Brian about their work and about how Holocaust survivorship, and narratives of survivorship more generally, fit within the broader Jewish cultural rubric. Self-identification as a chosen but oppressed people is nothing new to Jewishness. But in the 20th century, the specific idea of “never forget” became an ingrained part of Jewish cultural identity. It’s a uniting feature that applies regardless of your religious practices or political or world views. To make “never forget” a reality requires dedicated work from documentarians of all kinds. Dana and Brian are two such documentarians, recording and celebrating the stories of the survivors themselves.