A ‘disappearing’ artwork for Holocaust victims

During the night of November 9-10, 1938, Nazi thugs set fire to Jewish stores and synagogues. In Reichspogromnacht, referred to in English as the November pogrom and which was euphemistically called “Kristallnacht” (“Night of Broken Glass”) by the Nazis, apartments and shops were looted and numerous people arrested, beaten and killed. The pogrom marked the prelude to the largest genocide in Europe. Now an interactive work of art in Dresden is to commemorate it.

The installation “Disappearing Wall” depicts on 6,000 wooden blocks quotes from survivors of the concentration camps Buchenwald, Mittelbau-Dora and their satellite camps.

Its opening on the morning of November 9 is intended to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaustand the Reichspogromnacht.

The City of Dresden, the Goethe Institute cultural organization as well as the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundationare hosting the interactive exhibition at Dresden’s City Hall.

Messages from Holocaust survivors

The larger “Disappearing Wall” of 6,000 wooden blocks containing quotes by Holocaust survivors

The “Disappearing Wall” is based on an idea by Russian student Maria Jablonina. The installation was first realized by the Goethe Institute in Moscow in 2013 on the anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Subsequently, it has been shown on different occasions in a variety of places, including four Israeli cities.

In 2020, the installation was on display in 16 European cities, including Vilnius, Belfast, Thessaloniki and Madrid, as part of the German government’s official cultural program for the German presidency of the European Council.

In an adapted form, the “Disappearing Wall” was exhibited in Weimar in April 2021 as part of the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps.

Likewise in adapted form, the installation in Dresden invites visitors to pull out the quotation blocks from the “wall,” read them and then take them home. In the process, the wall empties and eventually disappears altogether, but the messages of nearly 100 Holocaust survivors are carried on.

Among them are well-known personalities such as Imre Kertesz, Stephane Hessel and Eugen Kogon — as well as many others. Their quotes are partly personal experiences, partly reflections on what the Shoahmeans for the future coexistence of people.

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  What happened on November 9-10, 1938?

  Anti-Semitic mobs, led by SA paramilitaries, went on rampages throughout Nazi Germany. Synagogues like this one in the eastern city of Chemnitz and other Jewish-owned property were destroyed, and Jews were subject to public humiliation and arrested. According to official records, at least 91 Jews were killed — though the real death toll was likely much higher.

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  What’s behind the name?

  The street violence against German Jews is known by a variety of names. Berliners called it Kristallnacht, from which the English “Night of Broken Glass” is derived. It recalls the shards of shattered glass from the windows of synagogues, homes and Jewish-owned businesses. Nowadays, in German, it’s also common to speak of the “pogrom night” or the “November pogroms.”

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  What was the official reason for the pogrom?

  The event that provided the excuse for the violence was the murder of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew. Vom Rath was shot at close range at the German Embassy in Paris on November 7, and died days later. Grynszpan wasn’t executed for the crime; no one knows whether he survived the Third Reich or died in a concentration camp.

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  How did the violence start?

  After vom Rath’s death, Adolf Hitler gave Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels permission to launch the pogrom. Violence had already broken out in some places, and Goebbels gave a speech indicating the Nazis would not quash any “spontaneous” protests against the Jews. The SS were instructed to allow “only such measures as do not entail any danger to German lives and property.”

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  Was the violence an expression of popular anger?

  No — that was just the official Nazi party line, but no one believed it. Constant references to “operations” and “measures” in Nazi documents clearly indicate the violence was planned ahead of time. It’s unclear what ordinary Germans thought of the mayhem. There is evidence of popular disapproval, but the fact that the couple in the left of this picture appear to be laughing also speaks volumes.

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  What did the Nazis hope to gain?

  In line with their racist ideology, the Nazis wanted to intimidate Jews into voluntarily leaving Germany. To this end, Jews were often paraded through the streets and humiliated, as seen in this image. Their persecutors were also motivated by economic interests. Jews fleeing the Third Reich were charged extortionate “emigration levies,” and their property was often confiscated.

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  Did the pogrom serve the Nazis’ purpose?

  After the widespread violence German Jews were under no illusions about Nazi intentions, and those who could left the country. But such naked aggression played badly in the foreign press and offended many Germans’ desire for order. Later, further anti-Jewish measures took more bureaucratic forms, such as the requirement that Jews wear a visible yellow Star of David stitched to their clothing.

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  What was the immediate aftermath?

  After the pogroms, the Nazi leadership instituted a whole raft of anti-Jewish measures, including a levy to help pay for the damage of November 9-10, 1938. The second-most powerful man in the Third Reich at the time, Hermann Göring, famously remarked: “I would not want to be a Jew in Germany.”

• Looking back on the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogroms

  What is Kristallnacht’s place in history?

  In 1938, the beginning of what became known as the Holocaust was still two years away. But there is an obvious line of continuity from the pogrom to the mass murder of European Jews, in which the Nazi leadership would continue to develop and intensify their anti-Semitic hatred. In the words of one contemporary historian, the pogrom was a “prelude to genocide.”

  Author: Jefferson Chase

Collective memory

Johannes Ebert, Secretary General of the Goethe Institute, said in the run-up to the opening: “There are fewer and fewer contemporary witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust who can talk about their experiences. (…) The ‘Disappearing Wall’ helps to pass on the survivors’ messages to future generations.”

According to Ebert, the new centers for international cultural education, which are being opened at five Goethe Institutes in Germany, will play a central role in this endeavor.

Commenting on the commemorative events in Dresden, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said, “Remembering together is also a prerequisite for living well together in Germany, today and in the future.”

Dresden’s Lord Mayor Dirk Hilbert opened the commemoration on the morning of November 9, followed by speeches by Nora Goldenbogen, Chairwoman of the Saxony Association of Jewish Communities, Johannes Ebert and Jens-Christian Wagner, Director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation.

On November 29, the installation will be shown again — at a ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Goethe Institute.

• November 9: A fateful day for Germany

  1918

  On November 9 1918, Philipp Scheidemann, Social Democrat politician and later chancellor of the Weimar Republic, proclaimed an end to the monarchy of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the beginning of a new democracy in a historic speech from a balcony of the Reichstag in Berlin.

• November 9: A fateful day for Germany

  1923

  The young democracy in Germany had a difficult beginning. Both left- and right-wingers wanted to eliminate it immediately. And on November 9, 1923, the Nazis marched on Munich’s Feldherrnhalle under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, who would take power 10 years later and bring about one of the world’s greatest catastrophes ever: World War II.

• November 9: A fateful day for Germany

  1938

  The disenfranchisement of Jews in Germany began long before they were systematically murdered from 1942 onwards. Before World War II started, on November 9, 1938, synagogues across the German Reich were torched. Jewish-owned businesses were plundered. Around 100 Jews were murdered that day in the pogrom cynically called Kristallnacht, “Night of Broken Glass,” and was a precursor to the Holocaust.

• November 9: A fateful day for Germany

  1989

  The fall of the Berlin Wall brought an end to the second dictatorship on German soil, the end of the German Democratic Republic. People stormed the inner-city border crossings in divided Berlin. The jubilation was, in the truest sense of the word, borderless. For the fourth time, November 9 went down in history. This time in absolute joy.

  Author: Marcel Fürstenau

pj/nf (with goethe.de)

This article was adapted from German.

Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/a-disappearing-artwork-for-holocaust-victims/a-59765617?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf