From Jan. 26 to May 25, 2025, “Survival and Intimations of Immortality” will be on exhibit at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE). The gallery showcases the art of three generations from one family, Alice Lok-Cahana, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana, and Kitra Cahana. It displays various paintings, photographs, videos, and poems through multiple galleries in the OJMCHE, the art exploring the ways resilience and creation can be passed down from generation to generation.
Alice Lok-Cahana, who passed away in 2017, was a Holocaust survivor who promised that if she survived the war she would become an artist. Her artistry was passed down to her family. Her son, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana, is a poet and survivor of a major brain stem stroke, and her granddaughter Kitra Cahana is a filmmaker and photographer. The exhibition was initially supposed to open before the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything was prepared and ready. The exhibit’s curator, and professor at Georgetown University, Ori Soltes, explains, “We had this whole exhibition ready to go and boom it can’t go anywhere because of COVID-19.” It was a big letdown for the family and entire community. However, after waiting years and replanning the entire thing, the exhibition was finally able to open in Portland with extremely few changes to the original plan.
Soltes describes that he and Rachel Stern, the head of the Fritz Asher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized, and Banned Art, “were having a conversation on a sunny New York Sunday on a bench about the next project,” when the idea for this exhibit emerged. Soltes had worked on previous projects featuring tri-generational artists, but this one, featuring the story of a Holocaust survivor and how her art was passed on, shined to him.
Coincidentally, due to its postponement, the exhibition opened the day before the 80th anniversary since the liberation of Auschwitz, one of the main concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Poland, during World War II.
The exhibition wasn’t initially planned to be near the 80th anniversary of the liberation. However, its significance is important to both Soltes and the Cahana family. Kitra explains, “My father grew up without aunts and uncles, without grandparents, and when we say never again, we truly mean never again for anyone. That’s why we’re called upon to both remember what took place there and to fight that it should never happen to anybody else.” Both Kitra and Soltes reflect the importance of awareness in regards to Holocaust remembrance. Kitra emphasizes that her medium, photography and documentary making, is her way of “bearing witness” to the world surrounding her.
The exhibition ties together art from three different individuals in three different mediums — painting, poetry, and photography. Finding ways to intertwine them was very important for Soltes. He elaborates on this, saying that many of Ronnie’s poems were focused on either his daughter, Kitra; his mom, Alice; or his wife, which made it much easier for Soltes to weave their art together. At the same time, he explains, “It was sort of a simultaneous emphasis on the differences [between the mediums] because they’re different media, and the overlap and similarities.”
Kitra recalls growing up with her grandmother’s paintings and art being largely integrated into her childhood. She describes them as “old friends,” saying that Alice would gather family into a room and ask what they saw in her paintings. Other times she would sit Kitra down with paint hoping to inspire her. “I was raised on my grandmother’s Holocaust stories, and I was also raised surrounded by her art,” says Kitra.
Alice chose to use painting as her medium to express the trauma and horrors she endured. In Judaism, Kitra explains, there is a concept called Tikkun Olam, which translates to “repairing the world.” Kitra explains, “She taught us that we can mend the world through art.” She continues, elaborating that her grandmother taught her that each person needs to find their own way to do Tikkun Olam and that she “discovered early that becoming a documentary photographer and filmmaker was the way that I could bring honor to that lesson.” Ronnie and Alice were both big inspirations for Kitra. After Ronnie’s stroke Kitra explains that he had lost the ability to communicate except for blinking. So, his family would recite the alphabet and Ronnie would blink his eyes. That is how they began composing the poetry shown in the exhibition, letter by letter. With time, he regained his ability to speak and write his poetry. The exhibition now showcases videos of him reading his poems out loud.
Kitra emphasizes the importance of bearing witness during an age of Holocaust remembrance. “To have the story of the Holocaust [documented], is and was so critical. … Those photographs, those documents that were preserved, are a testament to what took place there.” She largely focuses on photographing and documenting real and often horrific events occurring to people because of her belief that “memory is really what allows us to find our moral bearings and to keep pursuing justice.”
To Soltes, the Holocaust largely means two things. One, being unique in its deliberate intention of destroying a specific group — the Jewish people. The second being “that it’s not about the Jews, it’s about humans, and what we are, and the stuff that we are capable of doing to each other.”
He elaborates on the impact of the exhibition taking place on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, explaining that this particular anniversary is one marking the “absolute and total destruction [of] Hitler’s intention.” He further explains that Hitler not only failed to destroy the physical lives of Jewish people, but also their desire to create and flourish. “Because all those who were liberated and who managed to go on with whatever difficulty … including Alice, went on to survive, and then, in Alice’s case, more than survive, to thrive.” The purpose of the exhibition is to focus on survival, immortality, resilience, and creativity. To shine a light on the beauty of the world amidst horrors, Kitra remarked that “even in the most devastated hellscapes, there is a glimmer of hope, and that’s what [Alice] taught. She always lived by that.” “Survival and Intimations of Immortality” does just that: emphasizes hope. It is a testament to showing that trauma is not the only thing that can be passed down from generations.
Kitra summarizes, “We often talk about how trauma is passed down through the generations, but what we don’t speak about as frequently, is how survival and resilience is passed through the generations after something as horrific as the Holocaust, and the show is really trying to show just that.” She continues, “My grandmother Alice was able to teach my father this way to cope and witness the horrors of her experience through art, and that art bears witness. And so when my own father had a very severe brain stem stroke, he too turned to art as a way to survive.” Art is “a testament to surviving with grace and beauty, even in the face of some of the most horrific of challenges,” finishes Kitra.
