The Train from Auschwitz — A Journey from Shame to Self-Realization
In 2013, my work was exhibited at the Holocaust Museum in Queens, New York. This is a very personal story, the major journey of my life — to make peace and find healing with the pain and shame I witnessed from close-up as a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor. For the installation, I created a 4-hour long video. The video screen was integrated with the art panels and accompanying text; it ran continuously throughout the exhibition.
The video portrays a metaphoric reverse-directional journey from a Nazi concentration camp. However, where my father’s cattle train took him into Auschwitz, my train journey comes out from that camp. Where my father’s journey was into horror, shame, agony and death, mine is towards freedom, self-realization and beauty.
The basis for the video montage is a winter train ride from Bergen to Oslo, Norway, traversing through a vast, clean, snowy hillside. At the points where the train goes into tunnels through the hills, I inserted footage of German cattle trains and rail stations carrying Jews to concentration camps. Although there are no humans depicted in the imagery, the heavy weight is present from these clips. The audio track, which includes meditative soundscape and agonizing cries, accentuates the contrast between the tunnel of dark memories and the brightness of life.
I created the video using Adobe Premiere. The YouTube clip is a 6-min long trailer.
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