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Jill Freedman: An artist with a story to tell

2023; Wiley; Volume: 73; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cro.2023.a915441

1939-3881

Irina Sheynfeld,

Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior

Jill FreedmanAn artist with a story to tell Irina Sheynfeld (bio) I believe that to remember is a sacred mission and, therefore, one must be worthy of the mission; one must be equipped and ready for it. Not anyone—not every-one—has the right to declare, to say, "I became a Holocaust scholar," or "Holocaust historian," or "Holocaust writer." It's not given to everyone. You must be worthy of it.1 —Elie Wiesel A small but poignant show, Missing Generations: Photographs by Jill Freedman, was on display in two sun-filled rooms of the Derfner Judaica Museum in New York City from March 19 through July 16, 2023. It comprises thirty-six black and white photographs Freedman took during two trips to Eastern Europe in 1993 and 1994. Freedman (1939–2019) was a documentary and street photographer who dedicated her life to speaking out for the innocent and documenting disappearing worlds through pictures. She is well-known for her seven photography books, multiple gallery exhibitions, and photojournalism. Her work is part of the permanent collections of major museums in the United States and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1993, Freedman went to Poland for the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She said that she wanted "to mourn the dead, to honor them."2 A year later she came back to take more photographs of the survivors and to document the death camps as they appeared in 1993. Freedman was planning to publish her photographs in a book, Missing Generations: 50 Years Later, for which she wrote the text and was planning to include poetry and writings by Holocaust historians such as Elie Wiesel. The artist worked on this project until she died in 2019, leaving it unfinished and the book unpublished. Freedman felt that it was necessary—and even urgent—to gather surviving evidence of the [End Page 345] Shoah in the face of rising antisemitism and Holocaust denial around the world, particularly in Europe and the United States. As a Jew, with roots in Eastern Europe, Freedman had a personal connection to the victims. One of her photographs, Auschwitz-Birkenau: End of the line (1993), depicts a grave marker with the same last name as hers; it seems to be asking: were my relatives here, too? "When I was a child," Freedman writes, "I used to wonder what family—what distant relatives—I had lost. Names I would never know, old countries I would never visit."3 The artist photographed a small plaque that she placed upon the gravel between railroad tracks that took Jews to Auschwitz. It is inscribed, "In loving memory of 6,000,000 and my own family members whose names I do not know." This homage is personal: Freedman claims her place within the long history of Jewish oppression and exile. She points out that the names of those murdered Jews may be lost forever if our generation doesn't find and save them. There is nothing in this photograph but the textures of the metal rails and stones lying flat on the ground like tombstones. Nothing grows here; Freedman placed a tiny candle between two slightly larger rocks in front of her makeshift plaque. The candle is so small, insignificant, and almost invisible—perhaps it symbolizes our futile attempt to shine the light of understanding on the tragedy of the Holocaust. Freedman's photographs often have long titles because the context around them is important, and names and facts matter. One of them, for instance, is called Rose and Isak Arbuz, from New York, stand in front of the Warsaw grave commemorating his brother, his brother's girlfriend, and another couple who were part of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. Their skeletons were recovered from a basement and were buried together (1993). The photograph shows an older couple in front of a gravestone with four names. They look sad, proud, and defiant. Freedman wrote that during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Jews fought longer than France and Poland fought against the Germans. In the wall text for the exhibition, Susan Chevlowe, the Derfner...