They will never be forgotten: Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, Marceline Kogan (Convoy 45)
This sculpture was installed in September 2012 at the Camp des Milles Holocaust Memorial Museum in France. Serge and Beate Klarsfeld are famous Nazi hunters based in Paris, and Marceline Kogan was a two year old child rounded up in the infamous Paris "Rafle" in 1942 and killed in Auschwitz. The sculpture depicts her emerging from Serge Klarsfeld's book, "Jewish children deported from France." Beate Klarsfeld's autobiography, "Wherever they may be" is also shown in the sculpture. Camp des Milles was a French internment camp in a former tile factory near Aix-en-Provence. Between 1941 and 1942 it was used as a transit camp for Jews arrested by the Nazis. About 2,000 of the inmates were shipped off to the Drancy internment camp on the way to Auschwitz. Since 1993, the site served as a World War II memorial, and in September 2012 the memorial was turned into a Holocaust memorial museum.
Vanished World: Homage to Roman Vishniac
Roman Vishniac photographed the world of the Jews of Eastern Europe in the years right before the Holocaust—a world now vanished. Elie Wiesel called him "a poet of memory." His photographs have given me the chance to become a sculptor of memory. This sculpture brings back to life these two Jews from Vishniac’s photographs—one from the village of Vrchni Apsa in Carpathian Ruthenia, and the other from Slonim in Byelorussia.
Kinder Fun Maidanek (Children of Maidanek)
This sculpture is based on the poem by the famous Yiddish writer Aaron Zeitlin, written in 1946. My sculpture memorializes the children who were murdered in Maidanek. It reflects Zeitlin's poem, and has no head, no arms, no legs. And no womb—there are, and will be, no children of Maidanek. It is carved in the grey stone of his "smoke and ashes." But my sculpture also depicts the strength of the torso as a symbol of the rebirth of the Jewish people after the Holocaust, something Zeitlin hinted at in his later poems. It is also signed in Yiddish, but with the letters in reverse so it can be read only with a mirror. This, in deference to Zeitlin's anger at God ("A world without God. . ."—in Jewish homes, during mourning, mirrors are always covered).
Raoul Wallenberg at 77
It is 1989, and you have just been let into a cell in Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. The man on the cot in front of you slowly rises to look at you. He is Raoul Wallenberg. You have come to inform him the world did not forget. My vision of Wallenberg's heroic strength captures that moment.
They will never be forgotten: Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, Marceline Kogan (Convoy 45)
This sculpture was installed in September 2012 at the Camp des Milles Holocaust Memorial Museum in France. Serge and Beate Klarsfeld are famous Nazi hunters based in Paris, and Marceline Kogan was a two year old child rounded up in the infamous Paris "Rafle" in 1942 and killed in Auschwitz. The sculpture depicts her emerging from Serge Klarsfeld's book, "Jewish children deported from France." Beate Klarsfeld's autobiography, "Wherever they may be" is also shown in the sculpture. Camp des Milles was a French internment camp in a former tile factory near Aix-en-Provence. Between 1941 and 1942 it was used as a transit camp for Jews arrested by the Nazis. About 2,000 of the inmates were shipped off to the Drancy internment camp on the way to Auschwitz. Since 1993, the site served as a World War II memorial, and in September 2012 the memorial was turned into a Holocaust memorial museum.
Vanished World: Homage to Roman Vishniac
Roman Vishniac photographed the world of the Jews of Eastern Europe in the years right before the Holocaust—a world now vanished. Elie Wiesel called him "a poet of memory." His photographs have given me the chance to become a sculptor of memory. This sculpture brings back to life these two Jews from Vishniac’s photographs—one from the village of Vrchni Apsa in Carpathian Ruthenia, and the other from Slonim in Byelorussia.
Kinder Fun Maidanek (Children of Maidanek)
This sculpture is based on the poem by the famous Yiddish writer Aaron Zeitlin, written in 1946. My sculpture memorializes the children who were murdered in Maidanek. It reflects Zeitlin's poem, and has no head, no arms, no legs. And no womb—there are, and will be, no children of Maidanek. It is carved in the grey stone of his "smoke and ashes." But my sculpture also depicts the strength of the torso as a symbol of the rebirth of the Jewish people after the Holocaust, something Zeitlin hinted at in his later poems. It is also signed in Yiddish, but with the letters in reverse so it can be read only with a mirror. This, in deference to Zeitlin's anger at God ("A world without God. . ."—in Jewish homes, during mourning, mirrors are always covered).
Raoul Wallenberg at 77
It is 1989, and you have just been let into a cell in Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. The man on the cot in front of you slowly rises to look at you. He is Raoul Wallenberg. You have come to inform him the world did not forget. My vision of Wallenberg's heroic strength captures that moment.