>> Good evening and welcome to "MetroFocus," I'm Rafael pi Roman.

In response to resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world and ignorance of the Holocaust as survey after survey has demonstrated, there is a new museum in New York.

The exhibition entitled missing generations, photographed by Jill Friedman, is a showing at the art collection at river spring living.

It includes photographs of survivors returning on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

The chief curator and director and the president and CEO of a nonprofit serving more than 18,000 older adults in greater New York join us tonight as part of our exploring hate initiative.

Thank you, a pleasure to have you with us.

Susan, how did this exhibition come to be and can you summarize that?

Susan: Thank you for allowing me to talk about this important exhibition.

About three years ago I met the family of Jill Friedman.

She passed away in 2019 and her family has the estate.

She has many different bodies of work and we were looking for something that would be timely, topical and appropriate for us to exhibit so we chose these works on the theme of the Holocaust.

Rafael: Daniel, why did this come to be at the Judaica Museum?

Daniel: The museum, on the campus of Riverdale, years ago recognized we had an obligation to preserve the history of the Jewish population and the Judaica Museum was created.

We have been fortunate to have a curator as excellent as Susan knew understands the importance of the museum.

When we created the museum in the 1980's through the generosity of two wonderful people, Ralph and luba baum, we amassed a collection of Judaica.

At the time, almost all the residents of the Hebrew home campus were Jewish, many were Holocaust survivors.

We still serve the Jewish population.

We have far fewer Holocaust survivors, which is why it is even more important to show this kind of work, to remind people that as you pointed out, they may have forgotten or chosen to deny the Holocaust.

This is very important we use our space and this location to remind the world and more than ever today, that the Holocaust was real and there are Holocaust continuing even as we speak.

Rafael: These photographs were taken in the early 1990's, but in an application for a fellowship to help her expand the project beyond Poland to surrounding areas of Poland, Ms. Freedman Wrote she felt there was an urgency to it because one, ethnic cleansing was once again being perpetrated in Europe in the war raging in former Yugoslavia at the time and two, because historical revisionists were denying the Holocaust had even happens.

You touched on this, but I like to get response from both of you.

Do you think these times are equally as urgent for this history and pictures, photographs that reflected, to be seen by as many people as possible?

Susan: I think these are urgent times for jews and other people.

That is part of the message of Jill's work.

She wanted people to have empathy, to care for one another.

She wanted people to understand they had a responsibility to come to the aid of people who were different from them and that message in the intervening years is even more important today than it might have been in some of the intervening years since 1993 when she took the photos.

Daniel: Absolutely.

Those who choose to ignore history are destined to repeat it.

Our obligation is to preserve history.

Susan put together a very powerful correct -- collection at a critical moment.

Who would have known that we would be seeing what we are seeing in Ukraine and the world is where it is today and in the last three years the incidents of anti-Semitism is the highest form of discrimination we are seeing of all ethnic and racial classes.

The importance is even more so today than when we first talked about crating this exhibit years ago.

Rafael: It was important for Ms. Derfner Judaica Museum To not only -- it was important for Ms. freedman to show the resilience of the community.

How does she do that in this exhibition?

Susan: There are some really beautiful photographs in the show, the exhibition, that show that.

A good example, she has a photograph of children in a kindergarten that was started in Prague in the early 1990's with help from the Jewish community outside Prague.

To see those young children, and she cared very much for young children, to see them having a good time playing.

Another photograph that is a good example is a photograph of a wedding taken -- taking place outside the old new synagogue, also in Prague.

It is literally a community rising from the ashes.

Rafael: From reading some of the things she wrote at the time it seems clear Ms. Freedman Was also trying to capture other things.

She seemed to be very concerned about the trivialization of the Holocaust, the trivialization of Holocaust sites and traditional Jewish communities that suffered so much during the Holocaust.

Talk about that.

Susan: It is a double-edged sword.

When people return to these Jewish sites in Europe as tourists, whether the site of a former synagogue, or exploring the space of a concentration camp, because they are coming to have a learning experience, but there was also, especially in Kraków or Prague, when a café is sited, and they are using Jewish symbols in connection with promoting the tourism industry, there is uneasiness.

She had a way of pointing that out in her photographs.

Rafael: There are also pictures of tourists looking through the old new synagogue and do stuff like that.

It struck me.

Maybe it is not so easy to tell the difference between those who are going for entertainment and those going to these places knowing they are a sacred space, they are hallowed ground.

I am thinking of the photograph in the exhibition of a middle-aged man inside Birkenau concentration camp.

He looks like he is being disrespectful because he is climbing in one of those bunks, but as it turns out, it was one of the youngest members of Schindler's list.

Is it that easy to tell the difference?

Daniel: The gift she has given us here is to use people to tell the story in her images.

How we interpret those images tells us a lot about all of us, it forces us to ask questions, even as you might have confused that particular individual, I think it is important we become aware of our own biases and view.

I think she does that in a way that is powerful.

Rafael: Ms. Freedman, she is a brilliant photographer and I am sorry to confess I did not know about her before this segment.

She also had a fascinating life, a fascinating New Yorker.

Can you give me a brief biography about her life and work beyond this exhibit should?

Susan: Of course.

She is a New York City street photographer, born in 1939 to a Jewish family in the squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

She graduated from the University of Pittsburg.

I think she was a sociology major.

After graduation, quite a free spirit.

She went to Israel.

She was also a good singer.

She sang in cafés in Jerusalem, went to London and Paris.

She was a good writer, too.

She had not even picked up a camera yet.

1964 she comes to the U.S., settles in New York.

Works in ad copy.

She is in the advertising industry.

In 1966, she picks up a camera.

She has a friend or neighbor and suddenly she is smitten.

Rafael: Self-taught?

Susan: Self-taught.

Rafael: She documented policemen, firemen.

It is an amazing life and I am glad you're bringing her to the fore.

In the minute we have left, where exactly is the museum?

If some of our viewers want to look at this, want to participate and view these photographs, do they just have to show up?

Daniel: The Derfner Judaica Museum is in Riverdale in the Bronx.

They can call the museum at 58 1-1000, area code 718, to let us know they are coming.

We can arrange for them to come through the security gate.

They can also go to our website.

The Derfner Judaica Museum Museum -- the Derfner Judaica Museum is a designated Judaica Museum and I want to acknowledge the generosity of Helen and Harold Derfner and our dear friend jay Lieberman.

There are 5000 other pieces of work around our campus and sculpture garden, of all different kinds of art.

Rafael: We have to end it here.

Thank you for this wonderful exhibit should.

I will see you there.

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