The
picture on the front cover of the album is a watercolour by Arnold
Daghani, painted while inside the Mikhailowka forced labour camp,
1 January 1943. It is dedicated to his wife, Nanino, wishing her
a Happy New Year. The picture on the back cover of the CD booklet
is by Ralph Freeman, entitled Rosina & Carlos IV (1940). The photograph
on the middle pages of the CD booklet is by Donald Woodman and
depicts the view of ramp at Birkenau where selections took place.
ARNOLD
DAGHANI
Arnold Daghani came from a German-speaking Jewish family in Suczawa,
Bukovina, now Suceava in Romania. He died in 1985 in Hove, UK.
In 1987, a substantial collection of around 6,000 of his works
including drawings, paintings, collages, folios, sketchbooks and
albums were given to the University of Sussex, entering the archives
of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies in 1997. His many drawings
and writings document his experiences in the Mikhailowka forced
labour camp in 1942-43, from where he and his wife escaped only
a few months before the camp was liquidated by the Nazis. Characteristic
of Daghani's work is a selection and presentation of words and
images, but often without overt comment. As he wrote, "I have
preferred setting out the facts to interpreting them. I have provided
plenty of nails. May others hammer them in." The Centre for German-Jewish
Studies has earned international acclaim for its study of German-Jewish
social, cultural and political history. The Centre's main aim
is to investigate the contribution of German-speaking Jewish communities
to modern European civilisation.
RALPH
FREEMAN
Ralph Freeman was born in London in 1945. His Jewish parents escaped
Hitler's Germany between the Nuremburg racial laws of 1938 and
the outbreak of World War Two. After studying at St Martin's and
Harrow Schools of Art, Freeman worked as a jazz pianist, artist
and designer in London, Hamburg and Frankfurt and now lives in
St Ives. Rosina & Carlos IV (1940) - mixed media on canvas,
is taken from the exhibition, Foundations and Fragments. This
ongoing series of collages uses private ephemera that belonged
to the artist's family and links them to their experience of war
and life as persecuted people. The work is grounded in the story
of European Jewry in the period of the Third Reich, but related
to how racism continues to transform innocent people into refugees.
DONALD
WOODMAN
Donald Woodman was the main photographer on The Holocaust Project,
an exhibition and book by one of America's leading artists, Judy
Chicago. His photographs of concentration camps today are overwhelmingly
sad and evocative.
