BRINGING LIFE TO THE MEMORY

In front of the house on the pavement I noticed 5 Stolpersteine.
To my astonishment, the name Chotzen, my rare surname,
was engraved 5 times with names of my family members
that I have never heard of before.
 

Below their names the words Theresienstadt, and Auschwitz
did not leave any hope…
 

While painting they became so precious to me.
Full of life, real. I wanted to get to know them.
To know who they were. How do you get to know a person who
died 80 years ago? And what does it mean to know a person?

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The photographs were my reference, situations in which the great drama and tragedy that took place in the following years is in no way visible. But in the paintings I gave them a new and personal interpretation.

This is how I draw them: confident, and physically strong, healthy, in nature and in the sun.

Their characters seemed completely different, distant and opposite from the images of Holocaust victims as we are accustomed to seeing in those horrific scenes of persecuted Jews engraved in the collective memory of us all.

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Inbar Chotzen, 2021

To view full video click here
From the exhibition introduction video