Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Israel News

‘I Will Survive,’ Auschwitz Edition

Gloria Gaynor’s anthem “I Will Survive” may be a popular bar and bat mitzvah song, but placing the tune in just about any other Jewish context might seem crass. Which is why several Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors are outraged over Jane Korman’s decision to play it in conjunction with a video filmed at Auschwitz.

Korman, an Australian artist and Master of Fine Arts student, created a YouTube video called “I Will Survive: Dancing Auschwitz” last December during a family heritage trip to Poland. The four-minute clip shows her three children and father, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, performing an uncoordinated line dance in front of Auschwitz’s infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign. They also do the dance outside a synagogue, at a memorial in Lodz and at two other concentration camps, Dachau and Theresienstadt.

The project, which is part of a three-piece video series (the second shows old footage of her parents dancing in a forest to soft music, and the third includes interviews with family members about being Jewish), evolved as Korman’s emotional and artistic response to anti-Semitism in Australia.

The first video has been criticized by Jewish groups and survivors, though Korman said, “I understand that some might think it’s disrespectful, but to me it is a celebration of freedom… a celebration of life, of a Jewish family, and it’s symbolic of the Jewish nation that we’re striving to survive and trying to do the best we can.”

Korman created the series to provide a fresh approach to remembering the Holocaust “so the lessons are still remembered and continued and don’t become numb,” she told the Forward. In the third video, her father laughs while standing in a train car at Auschwitz. “Who would have thought I’d be back here 65 years later with my grandchildren?” he asks.

Korman’s mother, who is also a Holocaust survivor and met her husband shortly after the liberation of Auschwitz, did not attend the trip, as it was “too traumatic to go back,” Korman said. But when asked if she was supportive of Korman’s efforts, Korman said that her mother responded, “We came from the ashes, now we dance.”

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.