Do You Know My Name?

“The phrase ‘Do You Know My Name?’ emerged as I worked with victims of terrorism, grappling with the urgency of naming, and holding their memory in the face of targeted violence and global indifference. As I researched my own Jewish lineage in Fragments That Remain, I realized this question echoes across time - from the erased names of the Holocaust to the silenced names of modern-day victims. This is the aim of my work: identity, recovery, and refusal to forget.”

Portraits and stories of Jewish victims of terrorism - (click to access

Sometimes a day can change everything.

On the last day of June 2016, my world was disrupted by what I have come to term ‘the dangerous image’. As I casually scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed, a stark military photograph of a child’s bedroom confronted me; the bedsheets and floor were soaked in the recent blood of its 13-year-old occupant, Hallel Yaffa Ariel. As she had lain sleeping, a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist had climbed in her window and murdered her. The motive?. She was Jewish.

In the days that followed, I could not shake what I had seen from my thoughts. I had recently uncovered my family history, discovering multiple members of my family had perished during the Holocaust. Today, this evil has been perpetrated in my generation, and it is on our watch.

I wrote a simple letter to Rina and Ariel, Hallel’s parents, to let them know I grieved with them but felt compelled to do more.  After learning that the death of Hallel was by no means an isolated incident; indeed there were ‘no shortage of terror victims in Israel’, I determined to create a photographic record to bring these little known stories to a wider audience, where there is so little unbiased coverage of these frequent, horrific attacks.

Included in this project are nine such stories, yet they represent thousands of Jewish people in Israel who have been murdered or maimed. The portraits are simple, and often there is nothing evident in individuals’ faces to indicate the depths of horror they have endured. In fact, in place of terror,r I found beauty; a desire to give and to reach out to others in their loved one’s name. This, I believe, is due to the value Jewish people place on choosing life. It is a choice and one not always easily made. I encourage you to look into their eyes and listen to their voices. Their courage and dignity is unforgettable, their sorrow unimaginable.

Thank you for taking the time to learn their names.

Jennie Milne 2020

https://www.jenniferwren.photography/do-you-know-my-name

Do You Know My Name? Stories of Jewish victims of terrorism