THE STORY OF CLOTHES' SORTER
Found 8 Photos' of Lost Family
Touched by the Process Diary: I started thinking about my project even before my mother passed away (on January, 2012) but only afterwards it became my goal using my art to evoke interest in the Holocaust, by telling one woman’s personal story that relates to so many others and is important to humanity. Emotionally it is a difficult project; while dealing with the Clothing Sorter Series, I am writing, I can’t stop my tears, understanding why many people don’t want to talk about the Holocaust, and at the same time realizing why we should never stop talking about it... I cry a lot, but I need to continue, I want to do it, for the memory of my mother Paula and all the others!
THE CLOTHING SORTER with her DARK SHADOW (2017)
size: 66"x19"10"+ size: 65"x18"x18"
The Clothing Sorter is carrying with her a dark shadow forever.
A shadow that looks like a woman’s dress, made of black dresses that were used by 2nd and 3rd generations, we are also carrying with us the memory of the dark past from stories told by survivors.
Women that are mourning on a death of a close relative will come to funerals wearing a black dress. My mother was sorting clothes of women and children that were sent to the gas chambers and had no burial place nor a funeral… a yellow star is attached to the back of the dress, its shadow is falling on the wall behind. Dark Shadows of a past that We Will Never Forget !
BROKEN (2012)
July 20, 9pm: "As I looked at the old, used, broken, torn and naked Barbie dolls, my imagination made this symbol comes alive. I was thinking about the young children whose dolls were taken away from them as they were forced to take off their clothes, before entering the crematorium. The dolls are also a reminder of the dead human bodies thrown to big holes they were forced to dig minutes before being shot to death.
Imagining my mother, an 18 years old girl, sorting clothes of women and children, knowing they have already been murdered. Each one of the clothes resembles a woman’s life & death story.
ADDRESSING SURVIVAL (2018)
size: 8"x40"x70"
medium: grid metal basket, women’s dresses, red fabric, paint, glue.
The image on the floor is of a body with tape outlines, reminding a murder crime scene, a woman’s figure that seems pregnant, which make it harder to accept, in contrary the colors of the dead body are full of vitality. This work was created from colorful dresses that were used by women Holocaust Survivors: my mother, my mother in low and my sister’s mother in low. Two dresses were 2nd generation's.
The base of the colorful body is made of red fabric painted with black color that seems as an old dry blood.
Using dresses in my works have mixed meanings, first is the memory of too many innocent victims that were forced to throw their clothes on the floor before entering the crematoria, on their last day of life. This image is also telling about my mother who at age 18 was sorting Countless Number of women’s and children’s clothes in Pavilion 8, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
By using dresses of Survivors I am touching the fact there was survival and also life after the Shoah. We need to remember both, WE the generations after, our life was intertwined with stories of our parents and other survivors, we were connected, same way as I mixed in between 2 dresses of daughters of survivors (one mine). My mother’s story told me that Hope is leading to Survival and a Better Future.
RESISTANCE (2017)
size: 62"x74"x46"
medium: used women clothes, used metal hangers, cardboard boxes, wire mesh, paint, fabric hardening glue, yellow tape
On top of a large cardboard box, a wire mesh box with a bunch of unorganized cloths thrown inside
My mother Paula, at the age 18, alongside a few more young women, were dealing with the job of sorting clothes; they already knew that the next building is the place where the Nazis had been constantly murdering innocent women and children, at the same time throwing their belongings in large piles. The cloths needed to be sorted, folded and packed inside boxes, the filled boxes were supposed to wait for the delivery men to pick it up and send it to Germany.
In my Imagination those clothes are refusing to be send to Germany; I am visioning them coming to life, stretching their hands towards the outside world, towards freedom in a RESISTANCE they don’t want to be sitting in silence in a box, waiting for the delivery man to add them to other boxes, they don’t want to be squeezed inside the cardboard boxes on their way to unknown place to be used by strangers, they want very much to be united with the people from their past, they want very much to be liberated, but they are already lost…
