Jeffrey Wolin

Written in Memory: Portraits of the Holocaust
Artist's Statement


There was a lot of talk about the Holocaust during my childhood in a Jewish community in suburban New York. My grandparents, immigrants from Eastern Europe became furious whenever conversation turned to Hitler and the Germans. My mother's parents grew up in Lublin, Poland. Her father had a brother and a sister who remained behind in the Old Country when he emigrated to the United States early in this century. His sister had twins. My grandfather was unable to find out exactly what happened to his family, but they did not survive the war.

In 1988 I made a photograph with inscribed text of Miso Vogel, an Auschwitz survivor living in Indiana. For the narrative I used notes I had taken while talking with him during our portrait session. I wanted to show his tattoo, which is in and of itself a powerful visual statement about the brutality of the German war against the Jews. I also had him hold a photograph of his father who died at Auschwitz. This image acted as a window and Miso was, for a moment, transported back to a terrible time in his past.

During my year off from teaching as a Guggenheim Fellow in I99I-92, I decided to build a series of images around the photograph of Miso. I began each session with survivors by videotaping them prior to making portraits with my still camera. Instead of rewriting accounts of the survivors in my own words as in the earliest pieces from the series, I began to excerpt whole chunks of the testimonies verbatim, letting the individuals speak for themselves. In so doing I tried to keep the flavo: of the European accents, which often reminded me of the speech of my own grandparents. I looked for small, intimate details in their narratives rather than grander more general experiences or statistical data.

I am fully aware that no one who did not directly experience the Holocaust can truly understand the depths of horror that Jews in Europe endured at the hands of the Nazis. Nevertheless, it is my hope that by opening a window to an individual through his or her image with an accompanying story of great power, an audience will gain a better understanding of the survivors.

Faced with the loss of home and family and confronting a future in a strange land with new language and customs, many of the survivors I met had learned to live with their pain. Most were able to move their lives forward, deciding that life is too short and precious to be consumed with hatred and remorse. This work is a testament to the strength of the individual and to the resourcefulness and resiliency of Holocaust survivors, who have an important lesson in humanity to teach us all.


Artist's book available, please inquire:

Jeff Wolin
Written in Memory: Portraits of the Holocaust
Introduction by Charles Steinbeck
1997, Chronicle Books, 96 pages
Hardcover $35
Softbound $19.95

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