Lost. And Found

“It’s like someone took a big eraser, and those people are gone.”‘

Thursday, February 20th, the day I met with artist Leora Wise in her Jerusalem home, was the day the bodies of the murdered Bibas children were returned from Gaza. I felt haunted and wondered if all Israelis felt this way; if this would be added to our collective haunted psyche, we who remember the Holocaust and all the calamities that preceded it.

I asked Leora, who grew up in Haifa, if she felt haunted by what happened to her grandparents, Selma and Mayer Reich, who perished in the Holocaust. She paused, then answered, “It’s like someoIn February of this year,wisene took a big eraser, and those people are gone,” but, she added “It was not much discussed.” So in 2012, she and her brother went to Dessau, Germany to learn more about her grandparents.

Their home was gone. Their shoe store was gone. Their synagogue — a beautiful progressive synagogue burnt down on Kristallnacht — was gone. But there were ample records in Dessau municipal archives, and along with family lore, Leora was able to piece together much of her grandparents’ story. And through her artwork, Leora brought Selma back, slyly, wistfully, sadly, with a series of striking etchings and embroideries.

It wasn’t the first time the Reichs’ story came to light. Using municipal records and newspaper clippings, the 2008 Dessau Yearbook traced their public story, from successful, assimilated Dessau merchants to hounded minority, the seizure of their property, escape to France, internment at Drancy, and extermination at Auschwitz/Birkenau.

But Leora brought Selma back to Dessau: to the house at Zerbster Strasse 41, which the Nazis confiscated.

To the Mayer Reich shoe store, which was plundered on Kristallnacht.

To Dessau’s Worlitz Garden.

To places where Selma might have been saved: Israel

New York City.

In February of this year, Wise brought Selma back to a group of French and German teenagers as part of a French and German educational project in Dessau on how history is taught, particularly the history of WWII, the memory of the Holocaust and the prevention of genocides. The students had studied the Reichs’ journey, which began in Dessau, took them to exile in France, and death at Auschwitz. They met and worked with Wise, creating their own art focused on the Reich family journey. Some were inspired by the way the Reichs, in their shoe store, resisted the Nazis*. In French, English, and German, they drew maps, wrote sketches, poems, and made objects which were presented alongside Wise’s work at an exhibition in the Dessau Orangerie.

These posters were all over town. So this year in Dessau, Germany, Selma was everywhere, because her granddaughter, Leora Wise, brought her back.