The Siren, The Popsicle, and the Deepfake |
Recalling an afternoon of memory with Holocaust survivor Elias Feinzilberg in an era of deepfakes where seeing is no longer believing.
Today, I bowed my head in silence to the sound of a siren, joined by nine million Israelis. On Yom HaShoah, we are taught a specific kind of responsibility: to honor the memory of one person every year. To learn their name. To hold their story.
Today, I am holding Elias’s.
Ten years ago, I sat in a sun-lit living room in Jerusalem with Elias Feinzilberg, of blessed memory. He was the only survivor of a family of nine. He had survived nine forced labor and concentration camps across Poland, Austria, and Germany. He survived a death march. He had even been handed a sack by the SS and told to get inside so he could be thrown into a river.
He........