In a new installation at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs titled “Looming in the Shadows of Łódź,” artist Leslie Starobin presents a multimedia portrayal of loss, family and memory during and after the Holocaust.
The project, which features film, photography and oral narratives, was inspired by Starobin’s 2019 visit to Łódź, Poland, where her relatives lived in a ghetto until their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1942.
In an introductory speech at the installation’s opening on Feb. 13, Starobin shared that the photo narrative takes inspiration from Jewish memorial books.
“In keeping with bookish Jewish tradition, the first memorial to the Holocaust period came not in stone, glass or steel, but in narrative,” she said.
The installation draws from the testimonies of Starobin’s mother-in-law, Tola, and Tola’s sister, Dorka, who shared their experiences as Holocaust survivors. It also draws from Dorka’s diary, which she wrote during the Holocaust at the age of 15.
One image, titled “A Tree Grows in Bałuty,” appears simple: an open window in a dark room, looking out into a leafy yard. But there is more to the story.
“Dorka had told me that she passed many hours during the war sitting in the window sill” pictured in the photo, Starobin said in her speech. Dorka was “often reading a book to assuage her hunger.”
Despite the significance of the window sill in the photo, “there’s nothing within the frame that reveals the horrific events (Tola and Dorka’s) family experienced here in September 1942,” Starobin said. “The yard would just be a yard without the sisters’ memories.”
One photograph in the gallery — an image taken in 2016 of Tola looking into the camera with bright blue eyes — is accompanied by a quote from Dorka’s testimony about life after the war: “Tola went at noon to buy fresh bread. Why did Tola go and not Hannah or me? Tola was fair with blue eyes. She was very beautiful and she didn’t look exactly Jewish.”
In an email to The Herald, Starobin recounted Dorka’s story, which took place after the war. “While waiting for the bread, Tola heard one woman say: ‘We are finished with the Jews. The city is clean.’ Another woman said, ‘They are like vermin. They are jumping from holes in the ground. Now they are gone, but they will come again,’” Starobin recalled.
For Starobin, this idea of rooted prejudice is still pertinent today.
The Art at Watson initiative brought Starobin’s work to the Watson Institute because of the installation’s ability to “convey the profound horror of these events through a deeply personal and familial perspective,” said Veronica Ingham, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute.
Starobin’s introductory speech was accompanied by a compilation of Tola and Dorka’s video testimonies, as well as a clip of a documentary that Starobin’s son filmed during the trip to Poland.
“At the end of the film, there was a point of silence,” said attendee Natalia Golova, a pediatrician at Brown University Health. Golova has seen multiple video testimonies from Holocaust survivors, but “it hits really hard” every time, she said.
Another attendee, Zehra Rizvi, was taken aback by the installation’s portrayal of “going from a normal life to being dehumanized,” she said.
The installation will be on display in the Watson Institute through May 30.
