On the 15th of March 1943, 75 years ago, at the old Thessaloníki Railway Station, the first death train bound for the concentration camps of Birkenau and Auschwitz in Poland could be heard blowing its whistle. 2.800 Greek jews were cramped in locked animal transport wagons. By August 2nd that year, 19 shipments, arriving at night and under fog (“Nacht und Nebel”), carried 46.061 Greek Jews to these camps, where most were killed. Amongst them, my great grandmother Sol Venezia, and her children Olga, Lina and Isaac, and other relatives and friends.
Clothes and fabrics were all what my family inherited as objects of memory of people lost and their struggle to survive. In the photographs a knitted curtain was ritually plunged into the water, symbolically fulfilling the need for cleansing while the floating of the body is associated with the primary form of life in the womb. The dark waters refer to Tehom, the abundant deep of the abyss that cover the invisible and infertile earth in the Bible. Present is also the life giving divine spirit that wanders in the water and generates the light of love, acceptance and forgiveness.