Reading Friedländer in Auschwitz

Abstract

ABSTRACT Internationally acclaimed artist, Michal Rovner, writes about her works on the Holocaust and the influence of Saul Friedländer’s book The Years of Extermination on her work. Rovner’s Living Landscape is the opening exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, and it deals with the subject of the Jewish world that was lost. Rovner was faced with massive amounts of documentation, and she conveys her challenge to connect fragments of these materials into one coherent piece that represents the different dimensions of Jewish life, both religious and secular, and how it was spread over a vast physical geographical space, a world that is hard to comprehend. From this vantage point, Rovner looks at the immense challenges of the historian Saul Friedländer, standing in front of an overwhelming, seemingly impossible mission, trying to cover and document the years of war and extermination, being brave enough to face the horrors, the almost blinding subject, and forming the most important road map for humanity. Rovner’s acknowledgment of Friedländer’s significant decision to give weight and presence to the experience and voice of the individual is emphasized here. Rovner goes on to describe how Friedländer’s book The Years of Extermination accompanied her and drew her even deeper into the subject of the Holocaust while she was creating Traces of Life, an installation in Auschwitz dedicated to the Jewish children murdered in the Shoah.