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Today begins Yom Kippur, and among the many Pittsburghers of Jewish faith who will spend the holiday in synagogue will be Squirrel Hill resident Shulamit Bastacky.

Bastacky has lived in Squirrel Hill ever since she moved there from Poland in November 1963 at the age of 22. It's the only Pittsburgh neighborhood she has lived in, in the first U.S. city that she came to. She followed in her father's footsteps; he had arrived here a few years earlier.

But for Bastacky, who is a Holocaust survivor, Pittsburgh and Squirrel Hill are enough. And as far she is concerned, there is no better place.

"Today, in observance of the Jewish holiday, I am not afraid to walk freely to a place of worship because the U.S. Constitution guarantees me that," Bastacky says. "I am proud of my religion, my heritage, my culture, but at the same time I am proud to be an American citizen, because we have the freedom to be who we are."

Bastacky is one of more than a dozen Jewish and Somali refugees interviewed and videotaped by printmaker and installation artist Maritza Mosquera for "Body: In Diaspora," a yearlong community art project that focuses on the experiences of such individuals and their process of assimilation in a new society.

It's a project that asks the questions of everyday living: What is your favorite food? What is it like for you to be here? What do you miss from home? Where were you born? Where do you live now? Do you like it here?

The objective of the project, says the 45-year-old artist and Highland Park resident, is to access these peoples' diverse histories and give a voice to their experiences and insights.

Originally shot in video form, the dialogues focus on personal stories and the particulars of each person's experience of creating a new life in a new country. Excerpts from four videos Mosquera has filmed so far over the past eight months are on display in the Fine/Perlow and Weis Gallery at the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill.

Along with the videos, visitors will find more than 20 digital prints Mosquera created at Artists Image Resource on the North Side. The prints feature close-up views of various aspects of her subjects' physical presence as they tell their stories, such as their hands moving in a communicative gesture, or eyes darting back and forth.

For example, one long print made up of a composite of 16 images shows Moshe Baran, another Holocaust survivor, holding up a picture of his family. Some, like himself, survived the Holocaust, and some did not.

In the video, Baran talks about his story of survival, something he shares frequently as a guest speaker in Pittsburgh Public Schools.

As he tells it, Baran and part of his family survived mostly because they lived in a rural area and were close enough to the forest and mountains that they were able to escape the burning of his hometown.

According to Baran, most, if not all, of the townspeople were killed. During the time that the family was in hiding, his sister became stricken with tuberculosis and was unable to continue. Their father stayed behind to care for her; they both died. However, he, another sister and their mother survived and immigrated to the United States. His mother is now deceased, but he and his sister still live in Pittsburgh.

During the years of hiding, Baran joined the Jewish resistance. At one point, a German soldier helped him by ignoring Baran's traveling back and forth from a pile of trash where pieces of weapons were hidden. During these times, just asking to go anywhere would be more than enough cause to be shot.

"Without weapons, one could not get into the resistance; without the resistance, there could not have been liberation," Baran says. "They put blockades and disrupted Nazi transportation and communication on a constant basis."

Like Bastacky, he tells his story to Mosquera's cameras, which captured nearly all of his movements, gestures and facial expressions -- some of which have been turned into video stills and made into prints.

"One of the things that Maritza is very interested in conveying with this work is that visual imagery is a language and we can learn a lot from these kinds of outtakes," says David Stanger, director of the American Jewish Museum at the Jewish Community Center.

"From looking at people's eyes, the way they move their hands, you can start to understand a great deal about them. So, I think in many ways these are just another sort of look at a moment of the experience."

Looking around the gallery, one cannot help but be drawn to the video that plays on a nearby television screen.

"I think when people are looking at the still images, they get part of the story, and then they can go and listen to the video and get more of the story. It's that kind of a thing," Stanger says.

Throughout the run of the exhibition, Mosquera plans to add to the video and print project. The yearlong effort is supported by The American Jewish Museum of Pittsburgh and paid for by a grant from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Fund of the Pittsburgh Foundation.

It will remain on view at the center through Dec. 1, which is perhaps more fitting a place than any other. After all, as Bastacky says, "This place is America.

"I can hear at least five or six languages in this building alone. You can see people of every decade of life here. It's such a wonderful place, because there is such a cross-section of what America is like.

"This is what's beautiful about this country: It's a nation of immigrants. We need to have respect for all the different cultures that make up this country. There's beauty in every one of us, wherever we come from. And we are better people for knowing other people who are different in terms of their culture, because we are all human beings inside."

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