I saw the barbed wire fence that kept him prisoner when he was close to death. I heard crickets and the ever-present singing of birds that seem to sing differently in Poland than they do in the U.S.
I wondered if he could have heard the running water from the creek surrounding the camp. Could he see the tall, sinewy trees? Making it out alive was a combination of his will, his intuition, a bit of luck and a miracle.
My father asked me to tell his story towards the end of his life. I took this as a task. As a second generation survivor, perhaps this is a reason for my existence. I created a short film called Survivor: My Father’s Ghosts as well as a photo essay, which will eventually become a book. These are my love letters to him.
The remains of the war fascinate me even as a cloud of darkness from my father’s past has haunted me since I was ten years old. I grapple to understand man’s inhumanity to man. I understand now, that I will never truly comprehend what happened to my family but my continued sojourns to Poland and Germany help me to see answers to my questions, in person.
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Hannah Kozak was born to a Polish father, a Holocaust survivor, and a Guatemalan mother in Los Angeles, California. At the age of ten, she was given a Kodak Brownie camera by her father and began instinctively capturing images of dogs, flowers, family and friends that felt honest and real.
As a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, Hannah would sneak onto movie lots and snap photos on the sets of Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch and Family, selling images of the stars to movie magazines and discovering a world that was far from reality.
Hannah has been awarded the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Female Photographers and has exhibited in Malaga, Spain and Berlin, Germany as well as numerous group exhibitions in the United States.