Reclaiming my Family History

Holocaust Art

"RECLAIMING MY FAMILY HISTORY"

"Auschwitz Gates"

The gates of Auschwitz, with their ironic slogan...Arbeit macht Frei. (Work Creates Freedom)

Most of my family passed through these gates and left via the chimneys. When I saw the photographs my brother brought back from these gates of Hell, I was chilled by the enormous, pitiless, organisational industry, designed to perform ethnic cleansing, wiping out, what the Nazies perceived as "the other," the gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, political prisoners and the Jews.

This planned extermination was concocted by a few fearful and dangerous people, and supported by an alarming number of Europe's population at that time. At these gates, the fate of the arrivals was determined. One direction meant survival, at least for the moment, as slave labourers, the other direction led straight to the gas chambers.

"Auschwitz Prisoner's Uniform"
As I sat sewing the star onto the painting of the concentration camp uniform, I thought of my father performing this same task.

I can't imagine Janek would have handled a needle before. The numbers on his jacket matched the numbers tattooed on his arm. The material was thin, and the same uniform was worn throughout the year, even through the bitter winters.

"Nightmare"
Whilst working on this series, I often dreaded going to sleep, for my dreams would be filled with horrific images of what I imagined my family must have endured before they were murdered.

I was besieged with recurring nightmares of dark industrial buildings and mountains of corpses. I saw mothers, fathers and children being torn from each other by faceless SS and endless grey barracks where in back rooms, limp bodies were being shovelled into ovens.

	"Auschwitz Gates" The gates of Auschwitz, with their ironic slogan...Arbeit macht Frei. (Work Creates Freedom) Most of my family passed through these gates and left via the chimneys. When I saw the photographs my brother brought back from these gates of Hell, I was chilled by the enormous, pitiless, organisational industry, designed to perform ethnic cleansing, wiping out, what the Nazies perceived as "the other," the gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, political prisoners and the Jews.
This planned extermination was concocted by a few fearful and dangerous people, and supported by an alarming number of Europe's population at that time. At these gates, the fate of the arrivals was determined. One direction meant survival, at least for the moment, as slave labourers, the other direction led straight to the gas chambers.

	"Auschwitz Prisoner's Uniform" As I sat sewing the star onto the painting of the concentration camp uniform, I thought of my father performing this same task. I can't imagine Janek would have handled a needle before. The numbers on his jacket matched the numbers tattooed on his arm. The material was thin, and the same uniform was worn throughout the year, even through the bitter winters.

	"Nightmare" Whilst working on this series, I often dreaded going to sleep, for my dreams would be filled with horrific images of what I imagined my family must have endured before they were murdered. I was besieged with recurring nightmares of dark industrial buildings and mountains of corpses. I saw mothers, fathers and children being torn from each other by faceless SS and endless grey barracks where in back rooms, limp bodies were being shovelled into ovens.