Buried Days, Starved Dreams: Auschwitz Memory

Oakland Museum
Oakland, California
1994

This installation is my response to a 1992 visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. Groups of friends gathered to copy first-person accounts by Auschwitz-Birkenau victims into journals that were buried under trees, unearthed, read, and re-buried by museum visitors.

Temporary installation. Wood, journals, piano carcass, human hair, stones, burnt branches, burnt canvas.

Dimensions: 10′ H x 20′ W x 36′ L

Installation view from museum garden overlooking Lake Merritt

During the course of the exhibition I learned I have two cousins from my Jewish Hungarian roots who are Auschwitz survivors, now living in the U.S. and in Switzerland. I have since met one of them.

Created with composer Marilyn Hudson. Exhibited in conjunction with the Fifteenth International Sculpture Conference in San Francisco.

Clear envelopes filled with hair — Envelopes filled with human hair stacked in rows on the tower’s cross pieces.

A man crouches to unearth a journal — Journals were buried under trees, unearthed, read, and re-buried by museum visitors.

Wood tower with a center platform over a trough, accessed by 3 steps on each side. — 10-foot hight tower displaying envelopes filled with human hair. The trough is filled with branches wrapped in canvas with burnt stripes.

Eleven journals were buried in the dirt in the museum gardens. — Friends participated in this project by helping copy first-person accounts by Auschwitz-Birkenau victims into these journals.

A man and a woman sit on the walkway and read unearthed journals. — Visitors would unearth journals, read them, and were invited to write their thoughts as well.

Tower on a cement walkway flanked by trees adjacent to buried journals. — Visitors would enter the installation via the steps up to the tower’s platform, passing by envelopes of human hair.

Closeup of cloth with burnt stripes — Canvas with burnt stripes wraps branches filling a trough.