Holocaust

In the early 2000s I read an article that detailed the lives of Holocaust survivors with dementia. Horrific wartime memories regularly replayed in their confused minds. Some screamed out at night; others hoarded bread in bedside tables; doctors never wore white coats and there were no lineups. Ever. The loudspeaker was silent. Many other triggers were capable of sending them into deep states of panic and anxiety.

Based on this report and meetings with survivors and staff at the Baycrest Geriatric Centre in Toronto which, at the time, had the most survivors anywhere (sadly, few remain alive today), I created the series Holocaust and Memory.

Initially, I didn’t feel I had the right to address the subject because I wasn’t a child of Holocaust survivors though many family members were murdered in the camps. However, when I saw the work on the gallery walls for the first time, I broke down and cried, and was finally free of a lifelong compulsion to watch every film and read every book on the subject. It had affected me much more profoundly than I had realized. Atavistic memory? I don’t know but somewhere in my genes Jewish history lives on….