65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz’s concentration camp:
“At Home Everywhere and Nowhere”
Exhibiting photos of Holocaust refugees from all over the world
Starting 3rd March 2010 at the Korea Foundation Cultural Center in Seoul
65 years have passed since the concentration camp at Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops. Visiting the German Bundestag in January this year, Israeli President Schimon Peres implored everyone to remember the cruel crimes committed by the National Socialists, emphasising the importance of remembering this atrocious act of genocide – especially by the younger generations. This is what the exhibition “At Home Everywhere and Nowhere” hopes to achieve. It will be opened by Martin Doerry on Wednesday the 3rd March. The exhibition showcases works by the renowned photographer Monika Zucht and can be viewed from the 3rd – 25th March 2010 at the Korea Foundation Cultural Center.
Over the span of several years, photographer Monika Zucht and author Martin Doerry travelled through Europe and America to talk to those that had survived Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, those that had been sent abroad for their own safety by their parents, as well as those that had survived the Nazi years by living in hiding. An insightful body of work by Zucht emerged from these encounters, with interviews and essays by Doerry. The photos portray 23 individuals; they are some of the last representatives of a time when the Jewish presence in Europe was strongly felt.
[ Opening Event ]
65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz’s concentration camp:
Public Reading: “My Wounded Heart”
3rd March 2010, 7:00 pm, Korea Foundation Cultural Center
In 1998 Gerhard Jahn, former attorney general within cancellor Willy Brandt government, passed away, leaving behind some revealing documents: 250 letters written to him and his hister by their mother Lilli, a prisoner in one of Nazi Germany’s many labour camps between 1943 and 1944.
Gerhard Jahns nephew, the writer and historian Martin Doerry’ recognised the historical significance of this touching exchange of letters between his grandmother, the Jewish doctor Lilli Jahn, and her children. He published these in a book titled “My Wounded Heart” which Doerry will personally be introducing on the 3rd March, 7pm as part of the exhibition “At Home Everywhere and Nowhere”.
Lilli Jahn was born into a rich Jewish family, became a doctor, and married a non-Jewish classmate with whom she established a successful practice in Immenhausen near Kassel. The couple had five children, yet Lilli’s husband was unable to endure the increasing pressure the Nazis put on this ‘mixed marriage’. In 1942 he divorced her and married another colleague.
After being imprisoned in a labour camp, Lilli Jahn and her children started a sizeable exchange of letters, demonstrating the resilience of a mother and her children battling against the disintegration of their family, as well as for the preservation of some sense of ‘normality’ against a picture of bleak hopelessness. However, in 1944 the last hopes of a reunion were dashed; Lilli Jahn was deported to Auschwitz and murdered.
The weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT has been comparing this book to the likes of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and the Diary of the Nazi Years of Victor Klemperer.
The book has been translated into 19 languages; in Korean it can be found under the title <상처 입은 영혼의 편지> published by Acanet.
Presented by the Goethe-Institut Korea
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