Stories from a Tower of Faces: The Soccer Players
It can feel difficult to relate to victims and survivors of the Holocaust. It feels so distant from our lives today. But it happened just 80 years ago, to people who had a lot in common with us.
This unexpected familiarity is what makes the “Tower of Faces’’ at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, so memorable. Over three floors lit from a skylight above, the tower displays a thousand photographs from the everyday lives of one community — moments that we might see in our own family albums, or on the screens of our smartphones.
Take the four confident teenage boys, photographed in the 1920s, dressed in their soccer uniforms, signified by the striped cravats.
They were growing up in Eisiskes, then a town in Poland near the border with Lithuania that was home to more than 3,000 Jews. At the beginning of World War II in 1939, Eisiskes was incorporated into Lithuania, and then annexed to the Soviet Union. Harsh measures nationalized Jewish property and prohibited religious and cultural activities. Facing antisemitism before and after this period, many residents tried to leave.
The soccer teammates all met different fates. From right to left:
Velvke Saltz immigrated to the United States in 1923.
Motke Kiuchefski fled to the Soviet Union before the German invasion and survived the war.
Leibke Sonenson was killed by the Germans and Lithuanian collaborators in the September 1941 massacres of about 4,000 Jews from Eisiskes and nearby towns. His wife, Geneshe (née Kaganowicz), and son, Meir, also were killed.
Israel Szczuczynski escaped the shootings, but he and his wife hid with partisans in the forest and were killed in a clash between armed groups.
More stories from the “Tower of Faces”:
Jewish Victims and Survivors from One Small Town
The Youth Group
The Rabbi
The Sisters
The Toddler
The Guardian of Memory
