Love Stories of the Holocaust Survivors in Moscow
Why are we talking about love? Love, just as a people’s memories of genocides, is a personal matter. One has a choice to live without love, focusing on his or her own egocentric pleasures and interests. But one does fall in love. Likewise, one has a choice of living with no memory of people who were repressed, killed, and exiled in the 20th century – the century of progress and the century of terror. But one does remember.
“(Not) a Good Time for Love” is based on the diaries published recently, memoirs and biographies of the concentration camps’ prisoners, Jewish guerillas and members of the political underground as well as their children, grandchildren and biographers. The exhibition is filled with memories of the weddings, dates in ghettos, forbidden presents, mutual care, dreams of home, family and own land – Palestine. Witnesses’ stories engage into dialogue with works of contemporary artists exploring the history of the Holocaust and other military conflicts and trauma they inflicted.
Artists on display include: Christian Boltanski from France, Miroslaw Balka, Polish sculptor, along with drawings by concentration camp prisoners Gabi Neyman, Esther Shenfeld and Ilka Gedo as well as installations by contemporary artists from Europe and Israel – Sigalit Landau, Tal Shohat, Michal Rovner, Lee Yanor, Rami Ater, Mosh Kashi, Nelly Agassi, Bogna Burska, William Foyle, Roni Landa, Mira Maylor, David Palombo, Khaim Sokol, Lior Vagima and others.
Six million Jews died in Europe, Asia and North Africa during the Holocaust. Most were killed or died of diseases and starvation in concentration camps and ghettos. We know this number of “six million” as well as the names ‘Auschwitz’, ‘Buchenwald’, ‘Dachau’, ‘Treblinka’ that many of us remember from the school bench.
But the names Edith Khan, Inge Katz, Isadore Rosen, Rosalia Baum don’t cause familiar feelings. In a great tragedy their stories seem to take up such a small space. Their faces could be lost in a crowd of refugees and prisoners, each of whom carried about luggage of their own destiny.
Nevertheless, individual memory is certainly that one thing that makes our knowledge about a Holocaust more comprehensive. The story of Reni Spiegel, a young girl who wrote about her experiences in her diary, is not less important for us than the statistics of deaths. Our knowledge of the tragedy arises from the polyphony of voices. The possibility of familiarizing with different stories is the only right way of becoming critical thinkers.
“(Not) a Good Time for Love” is an exhibition project about Holocaust through the eyes of lovers and survivors. It recollects 11 love stories – Inge Katz and Shmuel Berger, Roshelle Shleif and Jack Soutine, Mani Nagelstein and Meyer Korenblit and other witnesses and victims of the tragedy who lived through separation, death of their loved ones, friends and relatives in the time of war.
Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow
All pictures in the article: The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow