Red Hawk tattoo
Two of our authors, Elizabeth Grace Frank-Backman and Stephanie Pasquarelli have started a new project called The Survivor’s Ink Project.
The Survivor’s Ink Project is assembling a gallery of tattoos survivors of abuse and violence have gotten to celebrate their lives. The pictures will be posted in an on-line gallery here at If She Cry Out and also on the project’s facebook page.
The project showcases survivors as masters of transformation: turning the darkest of human experiences into lessons of hope, beauty, and power. One survivor’s tattoo reads the same both right side up and upside down as if to say “No reality, however upside down, can take away a survivor’s fundamental nature”.
Other tattoos show a warrior woman rising above rainbows, flowers twining, a hawk soaring, and a spirited horse rearing. Rarely are tattoos the same. No two stories are alike. The essential creativity of being human becomes ever clearer when we rise above the inconceivable and embrace life.
If you are a survivor of abuse or violence of any kind, e-mail us your photo and a brief paragraph explaining why you chose the tattoo and what it means to you. The tattoo can represent celebration of any kind: your journey, life, experiences, struggles, success’, or anything else that symbolizes being a survivor for you.
- a photo of your tattoo
- a paragraph explaining why you chose that tattoo and what it means to you (whatever you feel safe sharing).
- the name or alias under which you would like to be associated with it – you are welcome to use either an alias or your own name, whatever you feel most comfortable with.
- the country you live in (so eventually we can do a map of survivor tattoos around the world!)
- optional: a web address/link that you want associated with your name or alias (blog, facebook,myspace).
- “like”ing the project on facebook: The Survivor’s Ink Project
- sharing or emailing this post – see the buttons at the bottom of this post
- telling a survivor you know about this project
- if you work with survivors, letting your organization and colleagues know about this project
- if you are a tattoo artist, telling your fellow artists and appropriate clients
The March of the Living Proceeds
Later today, thirty-seven miles west of Krakow, Poland, ten thousand high school students, representing forty countries, will join adults of all ages and participate in the March of the Living. There, the “marchers” will retrace the steps of the “March of Death,” the actual route which countless numbers of people were forced to take on their way to the gas chambers at Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex built by the Nazis during World War II. As is tradition, the March begins at the gate of the Auschwitz I site, with its inscription Arbeit macht frei (“work will set you free”), and concludes at the site of the Auschwitz II – Birkenau camp.
The March will go on as planned, despite Saturday’s air tragedy that took the lives of the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, his wife, Maria Kaczynski, and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders. Poland has declared a week of mourning and March participants will express their solidarity with the Polish people by observing a moment of silence.
This year, The March marks 65 years since the liberation of the death camps and the end of World War II and will pay special tribute to the memory of the million and a half children who were killed during the war. Additionally, this year’s program will call attention to survivors from different professional and social fields in order to emphasize how the Jewish community has succeeded in rebuilding a new world out of the ashes of the Holocaust.
A delegation from Israel, led by Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky and former Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, includes both Holocaust survivors and a cross-section of young Israelis, including internationally ranked tennis player Shahar Peer and film and television actor, Ohad Knoller. Black ribbons have been attached to the delegations’ flags as a visible sign of recognizing, and remembering, Saturday’s tragedy.
about: The mission of the March of the Living is to challenge a new generation of Jews with two of the most significant events of Jewish history – the Shoah and the birth of the State of Israel. It is achieved by bringing Jewish teenagers to many of the key places where these events took place, in order to understand the world that was destroyed and how Israel was established. This is intensified by sharing these experiences with Holocaust survivors.
The program strives to create memories, leading to a revitalized commitment to Judaism, Israel and the Jewish People; allowing March’ers to educate their peers about the Holocaust and to fight those who would deny its history, while forging a dynamic link with Israel.
This article originally appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy.com; reprinted with permission.
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