This photo depicts an Armenian priest performing burial rites for the dead while mourners pray. Despite the dire circumstances of the Armenian deportees, this image is proof that Armenians continued to participate in their traditional funerary rites and honor their dead. It was taken in 1915 in a deportation camp in Syria.
Credit: Armenian National Institute, Inc., courtesy of Sybil Stevens (daughter of Armin T. Wegner. Wegner Collection, Deutches Literaturarchiv, Marbach & United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“A priest read from the bible. We were never deprived of religious services.”
“Mother made her sew diapers and nappies and clothes for herself, like any fellow citizen.”
These excerpts from the journal of Hrant Sarian, an Armenian boy writing during the 1915 deportations, show how communal life survived in the face of genocide.
Credit: Louise Kiffer Sarian.

In the ghettos, the Nazis expressly banned any form of religious activity. In defiance of that restriction, several Jews continued to practice in secret. This picture, drawn by Stefan Mrozewski, depicts an illegal Sabbath dinner in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust.
Credit: MHMC.

In order to preserve their experiences in the ghetto for posterity, some Jews risked their lives to document their treatment. This was the primary purpose of the group led by Emanuel Ringelblum, Oneg Shabbat, which archived and hid these documents. This picture shows Polish researchers going through the group’s documents in 1950.
Credit: Yad Vashem Photo Archive.

In the ghetto of Theresienstadt, many were able to engage in artistic activities and cultural life. The ghetto housed a 600,000 book illegal library, allowing education and leisurely reading. Some residents painted artistic works like the one featured here, which shows the suffering of Jews in 1943.
Credit: MHMC.

The programme shows the ghetto-camp of Theresienstadt’s cultural activities during one week in November 1944. The programme announces speeches, lectures and concerts. These events are evidence of the drive of Jews to preserve their rich cultural life and creative spirit despite their internment in the camp.
Credit: MHMC.

Avrum Feigenbaum speaks of his experience with culture in the Lodz ghetto. From Jewish schools to a symphony orchestra, the ghetto thrived with clandestine cultural life.
Credit: MHMC.

The Khmer Rouge imposed a society where all forms of individual and non-patriotic emotional expression were forbidden. Cambodians resisted these changes through various means. Ven Runnath discusses a song she used to sing to herself – a rebellious act when it did not praise the regime.
Credit: Montreal Life Stories – Cambodia.

The diary that former school inspector Poch Younly kept during the Khmer Rouge period describes horrendous conditions while also representing a subtle defiance. Writing was a sign of education, an act the Khmer Rouge reviled under their anti-intellectual, agricultural system, so keeping such a journal would have been a clandestine activity.
Credit: Documentation Center of Cambodia Archives, Sophat Morm.

Consolee Nishimwe recalls how a group of Christian Tutsi prayed while trying to find shelter, expressing their religious identity in order to comfort themselves.
Credit: ‘Symposium marking the 20th anniversary of the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda’, Yale University, 2014.