The life story and photographs of a former Santa Fe resident and Holocaust survivor is being featured in an exhibit at the New Mexico Jewish Community Center.
In a joint venture between the New Mexico Holocaust Museum (NMHM) and the Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Greater Albuquerque, the fascinating story of Lita Blake is being told through photographs and a multimedia presentation by Lena and Michael Keslin of Santa Fe.
Blake and her family fled Austria in 1938 for Brazil, then to New York, and eventually wound up in Santa Fe, according to the NMHM.
“It’s an important story to understand the plight of those who survived and what their lives were like before they left. These were affluent, professional people living in Vienna. A wonderful life. They traveled around Europe. That was all ripped away, and they had to, you know, get out,” Chief Programs Officer Phyllis Wolf told KRQE News.
"Lita: A Survivor’s Life in Images" will be on display at the JCC, 5520 Wyoming Boulevard NE, now until April 30, in conjunction with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau annually on Jan. 27.
The exhibit is a product of the photo albums of Carl and Lita Blake donated to the museum, along with documents about their escape from Europe in 1938 by their daughter, the late Yara Pitchford, before her death in 2021. According to NMHM, Lena Keslin enlarged the photos and imagined Lita’s response to each of them, inspired by her many conversations over the years with Lita until her death at age 104 in 2007.