SUMMER 2024
I have added a new gallery to my website. The circumstances in which we find ourselves, dictate this. You will understand once you visit the gallery. Before you do however please read this blog post.
I am not so much a practising or devout Jew, although at one time I attended Sabbath services regularly and was chairman of our synagogue in Cambridge, but more, what you might call a Jew by cultural heritage.
When I lived in Canada I was interested in depicting the Canadian landscape and urban scene. That sparked my desire to look at my childhood environment back in England. That in turn drove me back further to my family’s origins in Poland.
I went to Poland and I saw the death camps and spoke to survivors. They described their experiences in detail. I also acquired photographs of the ghettos and the camps. Photos mostly taken by the Germans to record their own atrocities. A few images were taken by the Jews themselves with smuggled cameras and films and there were photos taken by the Americans, British and Russians when they liberated surviving Jews. I could not help but make my own images from the photographs and the verbal descriptions.
I spent more than two years making the series I called the “Images of the Shoah”. Shoah is a Hebrew word which means, more or less, the Holocaust.
I showed the work to survivors in Australia, the USA and in the UK. They were complimentary, if that is the right word, and said that my work showed the real truth better than words.
I decided to try to exhibit the pieces and donate them to a suitable place. I exhibited some at the Sternberg Centre in London. And donated a piece to them.
At that time the Berlin Jewish Museum was being set up. The appointed director came to see me in Cambridge and said that she would like to show the work and to retain it for the Holocaust section of the museum. I also communicated with the Jewish Museum architect Daniel Libeskind.
Politics got in the way and I was told that the people who were funding the Museum wanted only to have objects in the museum that were made by survivors of the camps and I am not a survivor unless you consider that if the Germans had invaded the UK I would have been on the list for extermination.
I have since tried to donate the work to other religious and non-religious institutions but without success. Until now it has been sitting unseen and waiting.
It is interesting to note that very few non jews have seen the work. This is perhaps typical where jews tend to communicate fears, feelings and experiences of antisemitism to each other and not enough to non jews.
Now, with the reawakening of world wide Jew Hatred, call it antisemitism if you find that easier, I must find a way to show these images. My website is the obvious place to start.
I’ve had the privilege to see many of your Holocaust pieces and they are truly phenomenal.
I hope many others have the same opportunity and are enlightened, inspired or awakened.
It’s remarkable although not unsurprising that 80 years later (3,000 years later), Jews are once again, experiencing hate and intolerance the world over. Has anything ever really changed?
I would graciously accept a donated piece and proudly hang it for all to see 🙂.
Thanks for your very kind comments Jeff.