KATHERINE ROSMAN & GAYA GUPTA: Photographing the last of the Holocaust survivors

A few seconds later, there it was: a portrait of her face projected onto the bridge, against the backdrop of the Brooklyn skyline, along with her own words. “It was not okay then, it’s not okay now.”

She took in the moment, mesmerized. “That’s me,” she said, her eyes shining. “That’s me.”

Erber is a Holocaust survivor who was hidden in a forest in the Netherlands as a baby during World War II.

Standing alongside her Saturday evening was Gillian Laub, a multimedia artist, who had orchestrated a sweeping public art project that unfurled across Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Using projectors positioned at strategic spots, Laub, who is best known for her photography, arranged for her portraits of Holocaust survivors to be displayed on the facades of buildings and landmark structures.

Laub and her team hoped New York City would wear these faces like an ephemeral veil for much of the night.

In addition to the photos were quotations from the survivors: “Every person saved is a whole world,” were the words accompanying the portrait of Faye Tzippy Rapaport-Holand, for instance. But there were no captions that identified the faces as those of Holocaust survivors.

Her one-day photo shoot of survivors last fall would also grow in breadth. She decided to continue photographing survivors and add video interviews. She imagined turning the images into a mural — perhaps as “an outdoor art installation wrapped around an old synagogue on the Lower East Side” — but was warned by a friend that she risked her project being vandalized.

“You can’t do that,” Laub said the friend told her. “The mural is going to be defaced. You have to honor these people. You can’t let them be defaced.”

Many of Laub’s collaborators donated their time to the project, but there were still significant costs. A Jewish nonprofit called Reboot became a fiscal sponsor, which allowed people to make tax-deductible donations. The project received $125,000 to cover the cost of the projections, from a donor who, Laub said, wishes to remain anonymous. Friends, family and collectors of Laub’s work also donated.

“Wizards,” Laub calls them.

Kirby and Batcheller mapped spots around the city where they could project onto highly visible, flat and windowless surfaces.

Batcheller said they consulted city and state government contacts, but no one was certain if there were any legal concerns because they were not posting physical signs and were not advertising a commercial product.

“This is a very gray area,” Kirby said.

“In the past we’ve kind of just done it and asked for forgiveness later,” Batcheller added.

In the meantime, Laub continued making portraits. In mid-November, she photographed more than 100 survivors at a studio in Brooklyn. Two Russian translators volunteered their services. A friend of Laub’s who speaks Yiddish also came to help.

Earlier this month, she photographed another 11.

For the shoot, Esther Berger dressed in a bright pink sweater, but she also brought a second outfit option in a bag. “What you are wearing is absolutely perfect,” Laub assured her.

“This is my favorite,” Malkina said of the song.

In early January, Laub, Kirby and Batcheller went on a test run. As they projected images onto the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel’s Manhattan entrance, police officers nearby took note and asked them to leave, which they did.

The project is “a bit of a caper,” Kirby said.

But Saturday, the first projections of the night — not only on the Brooklyn Bridge, but in nearly 20 locations — appeared to go smoothly. Several survivors and their relatives joined Laub at a pier in lower Manhattan where they would have a good view of the Brooklyn Bridge projections.

“I wish my mom was here,” Erber said.

Born in the Netherlands after the German invasion, Erber was separated from her mother when, she said, a doctor agreed to keep her and nine other babies in hiding underground. They lived in what she described as a makeshift bunker without windows or doors, beneath woods that were patrolled by Nazi soldiers. She and her mother were eventually reunited, and they immigrated to Israel before she moved to the United States.

Today, she said, she felt an obligation to tell her story. “We are the last link in this horrible chain,” she said. “It’s the reason I speak as much as I do.”

Laub, buzzing with nervous anticipation, finally breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the first projections. Erber, still teary, hugged the artist, who felt equally grateful.

“Thank you for trusting me,” Laub said, clasping the rabbi’s hand.