Exhibition: The Shoah Will Not Let Go of Families
ORF, September 17, 2024
German original: https://religion.orf.at/stories/3226649
Family secrets, obsessive preoccupation and silence: the trauma of the Shoah continues to affect the children and grandchildren of those who suffered a severe trauma. The exhibition “The Third Generation. The Holocaust in Family Memory” at the Jewish Museum Vienna sheds light on this continued impact in the families of survivors.
Curated by Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz and Sabine Apostolo, the exhibition takes a very personal approach to this sensitive topic: artworks, videos and everyday objects reflect the very personal way in which the horror of the Shoah is dealt with. Survivors were often unable to talk about what they had experienced, let alone come to terms with it – all the more burdening was its manifestation in families, explained Kohlbauer-Fritz in an interview with religion.ORF.at.
The grandchildren are often the decisive factor in survivors' engagement with the past, which often comes late; what could not be said to the children and what was always palpable for them, but not visible, can finally come to light in the more unbiased interaction with the third generation. The exhibition reflects the unspoken in families, which cannot be grasped, with transparent “flags” draped behind the objects: images and texts can be vaguely seen but not read.
Lullabies about Auschwitz
The “Trauma Room” is dedicated to the seepage of horror into childhood, where you can listen to lullabies in Yiddish and Romani that have Auschwitz as their theme. “Inherited traumas were heavily investigated by psychoanalysts who belonged to the second generation,“ says Kohlbauer-Fritz. The repressed is depicted in the eerily colorful ‘Kindertapete’ (Children's Wallpaper) by artist Jonathan Rotsztain (”Patterns,” 2019) in the form of nightmarish images: persecution and fear as a legacy, inherited trauma as a child's everyday life.
The fact that in many families there was and is one person who was and is “responsible” for remembrance, so that others did not have to deal with it, is the subject of the impressive sculpture “Witch” (1995) by Dwora Morag, who saw herself in this role and cast her face in a huge “memorial candle”. Dan Glaubach's “Re – vision” (1996) impressively demonstrates the depth of trauma experienced by survivors. What is probably a snowy landscape with vineyards for most people was interpreted by Holocaust victims as concentration camp roll calls.
What is the grandchild generation allowed to do?
The Israeli-German documentary film “The Apartment” (2011) tells the story of the enigmatic friendship between a Zionist family and a high-ranking Nazi, which continued even after the war and was apparently supposed to be kept secret from the children and grandchildren. Among other things, this raises the question of the responsibility of the third generation in their role as “enlighteners”, says curator Apostolo: “Are they allowed to do everything?” The desire to “find out everything” often collided with the older family members' need to forget.
Simple objects – a sewing box, a Jewish prayer shawl (tallit), a summer dress – were loaned to the museum, many of them from the Jewish Community Vienna (IKG); they come from the USA, Canada and several European countries and are representative of the passing on of (family) history.
The history of Burgenland's Jews also extends to the present day, with many of them deported by the Nazis. The town of Mattersdorf was recreated in Israel as “Kirjat Mattersdorf,” as evidenced by a street sign in Hebrew, Arabic and German.
Remembrance in film and pop culture
Memories have to be recreated in a project that uses the recesses in old door frames to make new mezuzahs, small script capsules that devout Jews attach to the front door. The exhibition also juxtaposes these with elements of memory in popular culture, including the results of the “memory journey” of the successful novel “Everything is illuminated” (2022) by Jonathan Safran Foer and more recent drawings inspired by Art Spiegelman's famous Holocaust comic “Maus”.
Exhibition note
“The Third Generation. The Holocaust in Family Memory”, Jewish Museum Vienna, Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Vienna, from September 18
Christian Boltanski's photo installation “Le Lycee Chases en 1931” (1987) shows the (deliberately) blurred photos of pupils at a Jewish school, further distorted by the yellow light of numerous spotlights – a symbol of the disappearance of their identities. Juxtaposed with the artwork is a later examination of it, a project that sought to identify and locate the people depicted – very successfully, according to curator Apostolo: people in the pictures were recognized by their descendants.
A little humor
Among the many sad and harrowing exhibits, there is also a little humor. An excerpt from the cabaret “3rd Generation Cabaret” can be seen in the exhibition; the program will then be performed at the Theater Nestroyhof Hamakom.
The self-portraits by Canadian photographer Rafael Goldchain, “I Am My Family” (1990-2008), are also amazingly funny. In them, Goldchain poses as his own “relatives” in various disguises – male and female, with beards or wigs, dead or still alive, some invented.
The re-traumatization of October 7
The final section, “The Third Generation: The Holocaust in Family Memory,” deals with the massacre of October 7, 2023. The stories of Jews and non-Jews who were murdered, abducted, and tortured, or who hid among corpses to survive, led to a collective re-traumatization.
The room dedicated to this event deals with the shock, anger and despair that followed, as well as the resurgence of anti-Semitism worldwide, but also with the question of the loss of empathy with others – also and especially in war.
Johanna Grillmayer, religion.ORF.at