Projects | Berlin (2025/26)

Max Mordechai Livni was born on 18 February 1926 in Prague. In the family photo above, he is sitting next to his grandmother Ernestine, together with his brothers Artur and Rudolf and nine cousins. A few months after the photo was taken, in March 1939, the Czech capital was occupied by German troops. His grandmother was the first of hem to fall victim to the Nazis’ plan to exterminate the European Jews. As Max writes in his memoirs, she died "in August 1942 at the age of 78 from illness, hunger and heartbreak" in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Ten of her twelve grandchildren followed her to their deaths: Ernst, Otto, Felix, Eva and Gertrude in Auschwitz, Minna in Bergen-Belsen, Gabriel in Dachau, Leo and Rudi in Kaufering and Anna in an unknown location. Only two escaped the extermination: Max, who was liberated by US soldiers on 30 April 1945 in the Munich-Allach camp, and his brother Artur, who went to Palestine in 1939.

On the occasion of his 100th birthday and in honour of his family, we are publishing the video essay "The Future of Mordechai’s Past". It was created as part of the EVZ programme "Young people remember international" and traces the suffering of the man who supported, advised and inspired us for more than two decades. Without him Memos would not exist.