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  y mother told me this. When I was four years old, I was standing at the top
of the steps of our house in Frankenberg, Germany. A bunch of young children
were yelling at me: "Juden Stinker, Juden Stinker." My mother ran outside
when she heard them. She saw me standing there, facing them and yelling back
"Juden Stinker," having no idea what it meant.When I was ten, I became a "hidden child." For two and a half years, I was hidden from the Nazis in the homes of strangers who had the courage to take me in. After the war, when I heard of the horrors people experienced in concentration camps, I felt that in comparison I had it easy. It took me many years to realize that my own life had been shattered. Even after I emigrated to the United States I did not talk with my relatives there about the war years, and they never asked. When my family fled Germany in 1939 we had to leave everything behind. Our landlady in Düsseldorf sent our trunks to us in Holland. We only received one of them, but in it were, among other things, our family photo albums. In 1942, when we were forced into hiding, we again had to leave everything behind. Cees van Bart, a Dutch neighbor, entered our house after the Germans had sealed it off to rescue things that were of value to us. He took his life in his hands. If he had been caught, he and his family could have been shot or sent to a concentration camp. He found the photo albums and hid them in his house. When the war ended he presented them to us. When I emigrated to America I took the albums with me. They remained packed in a box for about forty years. I knew they were there, but could not look at them. For years, as an artist, I created books of collages, mixing photographs and paint. Many of the images I used in my first books were of people in war and turmoil. Their agony moved me. One day I found the courage to pick up the albums. My fear had always been that I would break down or become hysterical at seeing my parents' images again. Finally I was able to put aside the fears I had felt for so many years and look at them. The photographs evoked feelings I could only express in collage form. I needed to move the photographs out of the albums and into my life. I used the original photographs, as well as letters, other images, and acrylic paints to create collages. In the process of working with them, more and more of the past came back. I began to remember . . . |