Fascinating journey told in images and film
December 27, 2022
For immediate release
Contact Lyn Berner, NMHIM, lberner@nmholocaustmuseum.org; (505) 247-0606
In a joint venture, two institutions will feature the fascinating story of a Viennese family that fled Hitler to Brazil, New York, and finally Santa Fe. The New Mexico Holocaust & Intolerance Museum (NMHIM) and the Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Greater Albuquerque have joined forces to tell the hidden stories of Lita Blake through photos and a multimedia presentation by Lena and Michael Keslin of Santa Fe.
Lita: A Survivor’s Life in Images will be on display in the JCC, 5520 Wyoming Boulevard NE, from January 15 through April 30 in conjunction with International Holocaust Remembrance Day. There will be an opening reception and discussion by artists and museum staff on January 29 at 2 p.m. in the JCC.
The exhibit was inspired by the photo albums of Carl and Lita Blake donated to the museum along with documents detailing their escape from Europe in 1938 by their daughter, the late Yara Pitchford before her death in 2021. Lena Keslin enlarged the photos and imagined Lita’s response to each of them inspired by her many conversations over the years with Lita until her death at 104 in 2007.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, sanctioned in 2005 by the United Nations General Assembly, commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau annually on January 27.
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