Aharon Appelfeld, 85

Aharon Appelfeld, Israeli Novelist Haunted by the Holocaust, Dies at 85
by Joseph Berger, The New York Times, January 4, 2017

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Zuzana Ruzickova, 90

Zuzana Ruzickova, Leading Harpsichordist and War Survivor, Dies at 90
by Sam Roberts, The New York Times, October 3, 2017

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Elie Wiesel, 87

Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dies at 87
by Joseph Berger, The New York Times, July 2, 2016

Imre Kertesz, 86

Imre Kertesz, Nobel Laureate Who Survived Holocaust, Dies at 86
by Jonathan Kandell, The New York Times, March 31, 2016

Frederic Morton, 90

Frederic Morton, Author and Essayist, Dies at 90
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, April 21, 2015

Buddy Elias, 89

Buddy Elias, Cousin of Anne Frank and Guardian of Her Legacy, Dies at 89
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, March 19, 2015

Bokaer installation honors women's acts of resistance

Have you read this New York Times article about dance artist Jonah Bokaer's tribute to four little-known women of courage?

Commissioned by the American Jewish Historical Society and curated by Rachel Lithgow (AJHS's executive director and Bokaer's co-researcher), October 7, 1944 is a multimedia installation inspired by the resistance activities of a network of Polish Jewish women, laborers at a munitions factory near Auschwitz and Birkenau. Róża Robota, Estera Wajcblum, Regina Szafirsztajn and Ala Gertner were among the women recruited by the underground to smuggle out small quantities of gunpowder to be used to create grenades and, on the date of Bokaer's title, destroy a crematorium. Just a few weeks before the advancing Soviet army could reach and liberate the camps, the Nazis arrested, tortured and hanged these four women while their fellow workers were forced to watch.

"These women were not remarkable in any way that is known to us," writes Lithgow in her essay for the exhibition's brochure. "They were young women who believed what they were doing was right."

Bokaer's structurally elegant, haunted arrangement of archival documents, fragmented music instruments, blow-ups of sheet music and projected imagery includes two dance films--one made for this project (Four Women), another from 2012 (Study for Occupant) with eerie echoes of his current theme. Both films feature the dancing of Laura Gutierrez, Catherine Miller, Irena Misirlić and Sara Procopio.

The exhibition is small in size, but its inner density invites commitment of time to lengthy videos and documents in plexiglass display cases. These cases stretch along a white table, oddly protected and recessed just far enough from its edge to make a reader bend in an awkward way to read the typed or printed words. To read each document, you end up leaning over a concrete block in front of each case. Each block has a piece of a musical instrument resting on it. A strange experience, as I saw it: You must decide to skim a selection of a document's words, get a general sense of what's there and move on or to tilt yourself just so, hold that pose and read word for word until you're done. With his dancer's sensibility, Bokaer seems to be trying to create discomfort and effort in our bodies as well as our minds. He introduces a sense that learning all there is to know about the gruesome reality of the Holocaust is both important and impossible.

I keep returning to Lithgow's words about this exhibition's heroes. Are they not, in fact, remarkable? In a sense, they most certainly are. But in another sense--her meaning, surely--they were ordinary women and ones whose small but essential contributions have remained largely obscure except to scholars of the Holocaust. Bokaer does not overdramatize this heroism but his work reminds us that anyone of us, at any time, can choose to do the one thing that will make a difference.

October 7, 1944 will be on view in the Popper Gallery at the Jewish Historical Center (home of the American Jewish Historical Society) through December 30. For visitor information, click here.

Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Esther Bejarano: Her voice rings clear, still

Amid the Rap Music, Echoes of an Orchestra Playing in a Dark Past
Survivor of Auschwitz Ensemble Teams Up With German Hip-Hop Duo
by Sally McGrane, The New York Times, June 27, 2014

Daniel Anker, 50

Daniel Anker, Maker of Powerful Documentaries, Dies at 50
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, April 25, 2014

Alice Herz-Sommer, 110

Alice Herz-Sommer, Who Found Peace in Chopin Amid Holocaust, Dies at 110
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, February 27, 2014

Juan Gelman, 83

Juan Gelman, Leftist Argentine Poet, Dies at 83
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 20, 2014

Megan Kendzior calls us to "Witness"

Scenes from Witness by Megan Kendzior
Top photo by Crystal Edwards
Bottom photo by Victoria Sendra

Choreographer Megan Kendzior will present a new, full-length version of her ensemble work Witness, a Danspace Project commission, December 19-21. Although inspired by her visit to Auschwitz, Witness has broad and ongoing relevance. Kendzior considers it her form of protest against indifference. Its title can serve both as a noun and a command, a call to empathy and responsibility.

I began this piece in 2009 after I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, and it has had many different incarnations. For this commission by Danspace Project, I created a new work under the same name.

It's a form of research that involves specific first-hand accounts of Holocaust experiences that we then translate through our bodies and our voices to provide an embodied historical depiction through the memory of one woman, referencing trauma in her past. She summons these other beings into the space.

I'm questioning the role of the spectator. With full respect and honor to victims of genocide and trauma, I want to continue to tell stories that challenge our current behaviors. I'm asking you to watch what's hard to watch and to go through it.

Witness will be performed at 8pm, Thursday-Saturday, December 19-21. On Friday, December 20, Kendzior plans to offer an afternoon performance of a shortened version including some of her young students from Harlem and a talk with one of the very few Latvian survivors of the Holocaust. For complete information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (corner Second Avenue), Manhattan
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The story of the Grand Mosque of Paris

How a Paris Mosque Sheltered Jews in the Holocaust
by Elaine Sciolino, The New York Times, October 3, 2011

Valiant journalist, subject of new documentary

Recounting the Past of a Witness to History
by John Anderson, The New York Times, September 2, 2010

Multimedia ‘Kamp’ tells Auschwitz story

‘Kamp,’ Auschwitz Tableau, Comes to St. Ann’s Warehouse

by Patricia Cohen, The New York Times, June 1, 2010

Dina Babbitt, Auschwitz portraitist, 86

Dina Babbitt, Artist at Auschwitz, Is Dead at 86
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, August 2, 2009