[dropcap]John[/dropcap] Pregulman knows that the subjects of his photographs are in that stage of life sometimes poetically referred to as the “twilight years.”

The subjects themselves — Holocaust survivors — are only too aware that the dusk is deepening, which is likely why they allow their portraits to be taken.

“It gives them a renewed sense of hope that they will be remembered and not forgotten,” says Pregulman, an avocational photographer who divides his time between Denver and Memphis.

“Their biggest fear is that they will be forgotten, and that the Holocaust will be forgotten.”

The fact that the man taking their picture is 58 years old, at least a generation younger than they are, helps quell that fear.

“What it gives them mainly is comfort that people of our generation are interested in what they went through and want to remember.”

For the past few years, Pregulman has photographed nearly 300 survivors, in Denver, Boulder and a dozen other American cities. He doesn’t charge a cent for the sessions or photos, or for his traveling expenses.

He doesn’t intend to post the photos online, publish them in a book or put them in a movie or an exhibit, although they may be one day donated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, with the survivors’ permission.

Instead, he simply gives prints of the photographs to the survivors, those whom he calls “these amazing people whose biggest fear is that they will be forgotten.”

Pregulman is quick to clarify that the survivors’ desire to be remembered isn’t driven by any sort of egotistic or vain urge. What they want to be remembered isn’t so much their own names or faces, he says, but the horrors visited upon them in their youth — the Holocaust itself.

Most survivors are not people who live in the past, Pregulman says, but close observers of current events. When they see racism, anti-Semitism or intolerance, they see the seeds of hate that eventually grew into their own nightmares.

“Now, more than ever, with all that’s going on in the world, it’s important to pay attention to these people who know what happens when you let leaders get out of control and you don’t participate in the world,” Pregulman says.

“They’re very big on voting, on being involved and informed and making sure their children know what’s going on. They’re very big on tolerance and not being racist and being inclusionary and not exclusionary.”

[dropcap]It’s[/dropcap] interesting that Pregulman, who started photographing survivors some four years ago, doesn’t have a close personal Holocaust connection.

Raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., his first encounter with a survivor was the cantor at his synagogue there.

“My cantor growing up was an Auschwitz survivor. He told us stories while we were doing our Bar Mitzvah lessons, but at the time I really didn’t connect.”

A part-time Denverite for the past 16 years, he studied photography while in his 20s, at New York’s Parson’s School of Design. He worked for a period in dance and fashion photography, and did portraits on the side for awhile, but the majority of his professional career has been in his family’s Tennessee business and, more recently, real estate.

At one point, he photographed “all the Jews in Chattanooga who were over 70,” Pregulman says. “Some of them were survivors, but I didn’t think about that at the time.”

It wasn’t until 2012, when a personal friend who ran the Holocaust museum in Skokie, Ill. asked him for a favor that Pregulman found the nexus between survivors and photography. His friend asked him to photograph survivors who lived in Chicago.

“So I went to Chicago and did 65 photos of different survivors in three days,” he says. “I fell in love with these amazing people and their stories and their incredible outlook on life — mostly positive, mostly happy, mostly thrilled to be US citizens. That really launched my passion.”

As of this writing, Pregulman has photographed 286 survivors, some 45 of whom live in Colorado. He has conducted sessions in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, New Orleans, Cleveland, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Memphis, even Tokyo.

The photographer defines “survivor” in a broad context, relying upon a definition used by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum: “Anyone who between 1933 and 1945 left their home to escape persecution or death, whether they were in a camp or not, is considered a survivor,” he says

Pregulman acknowledges that among survivors themselves, “there’s a little bit of a hierarchy.

“We don’t get involved in any of that. The question I ask them is, ‘If you had stayed what would have happened?’ Invariably, they would have been killed, so that makes you a survivor.”

Because many survivors can be wary of strangers, he says, Pregulman usually contacts them indirectly, through Jewish family service organizations, federations or museums.

In many ways, he finds them to be very average American people.

“There are some who have been very successful and I’ve found that they give a lot back, but the average ones are in their late 80s at this point, have been successful in the fact that most of them raised families here, and were happy to get whatever work they could get at the time.

“They’re not showy people, they don’t want to be known for anything except for the fact that they came to a new country, they contributed, they raised families. They’re part of the community.”

Most observe Judaism on some level.

The youngest survivor Pregulman has photographed, 73, was a child survivor; the oldest was 100.

Maybe three quarters are women, which he believes is mostly due to life expectancy averages, and, not surprisingly, many are physically frail, although some display remarkable energy and fitness.

Pregulman shoots with a simple digital camera, relying exclusively on natural lighting, using simple sets, usually at Jewish organizational offices or survivors’ homes.

Sometimes, he poses his subjects with objects that are personally important to them, such as artwork they have created, a book they have written or a photograph of a loved one.

“They often want to hold something personal,” he says, “but I want the focus to be on them, not the backdrop.”

His earlier survivor photographs were in black and white. He switched to color when his subjects told him that black and white was too somber.

“I try to do happier looking pictures,” Pregulman says. “I don’t use that stark sort of artsy look. I try to show them as they are, not to make too much drama out of it. I do try to get them to smile, although some just absolutely refuse.”

Smiling himself, he adds another personal detail that will likely be familiar to every photographer who has ever shot portraits and which reveals the essential humanity of the survivors. “The women, of course, don’t want any wrinkles.”

[dropcap]Pregulman[/dropcap] is aware that despite their outward ordinariness, the Holocaust survivors he encounters are a far cry from average Americans.

Their experiences and recollections place them in a very unusual and exclusive group, one with many stories to tell and a strong sense of obligation to tell them.

More than half of his subjects, Pregulman estimates, have done oral history interviews for such venues as the Shoah Foundation or given presentations to schools or other groups.

“But I’d say that at least one out of five has never told their story,” he says, “and doesn’t speak about it now.”

One of his earlier subjects was the father of some of his childhood friends. During his childhood, Pregulman says he never knew the man was a survivor. He thinks that the man’s own children were only dimly aware of that fact themselves.

“But when I took his picture he was so thrilled that for the first time he started to open up to his own family,” he says.

“A lot of these people don’t like attention because during the war if you got noticed you got sent away, so it’s sometimes hard for them to talk about what happened.”

Only rarely do his subjects decline to share with him their personal stories from the Holocaust period. The vast majority are eager to do so, says Pregulman, who often begins sessions with a few basic questions, such as their hometown.

That tends to open the floodgates. Of the many Holocaust stories he has heard, some have taken hours to tell, long after Pregulman has turned off his camera.

Such openness might have something to do with the fact that he is a virtual stranger to his subjects, someone who cannot be personally hurt by their tragic stories, such as a family member.

“There’s a comfort with that,” he says. “We establish a certain rapport and sometimes they do tend to want to convey something they might not have told anyone else.”

Recently, in Charlotte, Pregulman photographed a woman who said that she had never told her Holocaust story to anyone before meeting him.

Among the stories he has heard are recollections that are immensely tragic, often horrific. Pregulman tries to take such stories in stride, hoping that relating them is cathartic for the survivors, and says he has so far been able to avoid being negatively affected himself.

“I haven’t really heard anything that I wish I hadn’t heard,” he says, “because I really am interested in what they have to say.”

He admits, however, that it can be difficult to watch survivors relive their pain when they recount events of the past. Many cannot tell their stories without tears.

“That can be hard to hear,” Pregulman says. “It’s hard to watch them suffer.”

[dropcap]His[/dropcap] avocation of photographing survivors, he says, will last “until there’s none left,” Pregulman says. “Our mission is to do as many survivors as possible. Some will be around for another 15 years.”

The project may last even longer, since “we are now starting to get requests from the second generation, children of survivors.”

That may occupy him for quite a long time, Pregulman acknowledges, as likely will a new survivor project he began last fall with his fiancée, Amy Israel, a retired Jewish community professional who lives in Memphis where the program is based.

Named Kavod — Hebrew for dignity — “it arose when we found, during these photo sessions, that about 20% of survivors are living in poverty or close to it,” Pregulman says.

“We decided that this was something that we had to try to do something about. We’ve been raising money since November.”

The project, under Amy Israel’s management, is currently focused geographically in the Southeast; Pregulman hopes it will eventually expand well beyond that region.

“It’s really for emergency needs,” he says. “What happens a lot is that survivors will run into an expense they don’t expect and they’re on a fixed budget — a car breaks down, their air conditioning breaks down, they need additional drugs that they didnexpect. It just blows their budget so they have to make choices.”

Jewish social service organizations do provide aid, he acknowledges, but often not quickly enough to help with such needs.

“What we’re trying to do is help fill that gap when they need money within two or three days. We don’t require any proof of financial need, we don’t make them sign any applications, we don’t even want to know their names.”

In Memphis, Kavod is coordinated by the local Jewish Family Service. It vets Holocaust survivors and directs funds, via gift cards, “to help them cover their needs,” says Pregulman, adding that most gifts are in the range of several hundred dollars.

The genesis of Kavod is only one of the ways his work with survivors has dramatically changed his life.

Pregulman has already begun giving public presentations on the Holocaust through Facing History and Ourselves, an educational project that seeks to combat intolerance and racism through a Holocaust lens. He has spoken to schools in Chattanooga, including his own alma mater high school.

To say that Pregulman takes the Holocaust and its implications seriously is something of an understatement at this point.

“I’m doing whatever I can,” he says, “and as much as I can, to bring it to people’s consciousness so that they will understand what the dangers are.”

[dropcap]His[/dropcap] sustained contact with people who survived one of history’s darkest epochs has not only changed the course of Pregulman’s life, but the very ways in which he views life, he says.

“When I started this project I wasn’t expecting anything from it, but what it’s done is give me an incredible sense of what’s important in life. It has helped me be more positive because they are the most positive people I’ve ever encountered, despite what happened to them.

“And it really gives me perspective. When you think you have problems or challenges in your life, I really do try and remember them and what they had to go through. Now, when I have problems with my children, I think, that’s nothing. What if somebody came to your door someday and took your children away?”

In that sense, his photography has been “inspirational, not depressing at all,” Pregulman says.

It has also, in a very tangible way, brought him very close to people who have become integral in his life. He is in regular contact with many of those who have sat before his camera and considers them friends

“Actually, I sort of feel like they’re my family,” he says. “I’ve taken them to heart.”

Chris Leppek may be reached at IJNEWS@aol.com.