BOLOGNA HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
SHEMA (Translates as ‘Pay attention’ or ‘Listen up’).
Confronting the viewer with a maze of objects through which he or she must find their own path and make their own unique journey, this sculptural installation is a rich melding together of vital ideas relating to the Shoah, and a message for the future using the text of the great writer Primo Levi.
The overall design is the page of a book filled with letters. The existing space resembles a sheet of white paper and its staircases the edges of a book and the proposed work will make use of this environment to the maximum effect. The installation is set out in the format of the Talmud page, with a central Hebrew text and translations in the margins where the commentaries of Rashi and Tosafot appear on the classic Talmudic Daf (page).
This is a deliberate reference to the rich tradition of Hebrew printing in Bologna and Northern Italy in general, a symbol of the Jewish association with learning as the people of the book and a marker of the loss of knowledge and culture as well as the human catastrophe of the Holocaust. This is represented by the monumental standing forms, track-like areas of printing block-based letters that powerfully hint at aerial images of the camps and their meticulous layouts. Scattered letters throughout the space reference the displacement that resulted from the Shoah.
The actual text running through the installation starts with the word Shema, the most iconic Hebrew prayer and the very word that was spoken by countless thousands of Jews in their last moments before becoming victims of the Nazis, as is recorded in many testimonies. However this Shema is a title of Primo Levi's poem:
You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider whether this is a man, Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread Whodiesatayesorano. Consider whether this is a woman, Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.
Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.
Voi che vivete sicuri
Nelle vostre tiepide case
voi che trovate tornando a sera Il cibo caldo e visi amici:
Considerate se questo è un uomo Che lavora nel fango
Che non conosce pace
Che lotta per mezzo pane Chemuoreperunsìoperunno. Considerate se questa è una donna Senza capelli e senza nome
Senza più forza di ricordare
Vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo Come una rana d'inverno.
Meditate che questo è stato
Vi comando queste parole. Scolpitele nel vostro cuore Stando in casa andando per via Coricandovi alzandovi Ripetetele ai vostri figli.
O vi si sfaccia la casa
La malattia vi impedisca
I vostri nati torcano il viso da voi.
The installation is comprised of the words of this poem invoking the great duty of mankind to pass on the memory of the Shoah to future generations. The universal message is emphasised by spelling out the poem in sections of Hebrew, Italian and English.