Sweet Home Sweet: A Story of Survival, Memory, and Returns

Sweet Home Sweet: A Story of Survival, Memory, and Returns

Open Now Through December 2024

“When he was in the Kraków ghetto he was still taking photos, and those photos were buried in Płaszów and discovered after the war, he hid them in a pickle jar, a glass pickle jar in Płaszów … So, I sat with him in his home with these photographs and I asked him who everyone was … He remembered their names, he remembered if they survived the war, he remembered everything about them.”

Richard Ores was born to a Jewish family in Krakow in 1923. He lived in the center of the city with his mother and sister, attending Jewish and public schools. He was 15 years old when the war broke out. He survived the Krakow Ghetto, Plaszow, and several concentration camps in Germany. While in the ghetto, Richard took photographs of his friends to capture what daily life looked like.

Together with a collection of pre-war images, Richard buried these photographs in a jar in Plaszow and dug them up after the war. They serve as symbolic proof of the existence of his family and friends, almost all killed during the Holocaust.

More Exhibits