The last Swiss Holocaust survivors 

The commemoration held to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp has shone the spotlight on the events of the past. Some of those who lived through the Holocaust live in Switzerland. 

Estimates put the number of Holocaust survivors living in Switzerland at around 400. In 2016, some of them were photographed by Beat Mumenthaler, film-makers and other multimedia journalists. The idea was to showcase the faces of these men and women, who have been marked by their remarkable lives and their experiences.

The portraits have been gathered into an exhibition, entitled The Last Swiss Holocaust Survivors, on the initiative of the Zurich-based Gamaraal Foundation. This organisation was founded in 2014 by Anita Winter, the daughter of two German Holocaust survivors. Its aim is to support survivors and to ensure that the memory of these events is passed down to younger generations.

Since 2017, the travelling exhibition has been shown at places such as the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Swiss embassy in Berlin and at The Shoah Memorial in Milan, Italy.