Beginning at the age of seven, I learned about Judaism three days a week. One ever-present theme in my course of study was the Holocaust. Very little of this atrocious period was left out to those of us who carry on its legacy. I remember the books, the movies, and the survivors with their numbers forever tattooed on their arms.

As openly as the Jewish community mourned the victims, my family kept hidden our own loss. It was not until my Great Uncle Bernard’s journal of his trip to Poland in 1934 was unearthed, typed, and given to me that I understood my personal connection with the Holocaust. Three centuries of Makovers had lived in Poland. My great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, their children and their children’s children lived there until 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland and the trail of information abruptly stopped. They seemingly disappeared, never to be heard again.

In 2000, I traveled alone to Poland for eight months, with Great Uncle Bernard’s journal as my companion, searching for information to fill in the gaps in my own history. I traveled through the abandoned synagogues, the desecrated cemeteries and the concentration camps. My stories, thus my photographs, speak of the death that surrounded me and of the ghosts that spoke to me.