How do we continue to remember the Holocaust with depth and relevance? And to what end?
Stories of migration, trauma, loss, hope, resilience and survival are explored through artworks created by 14 artists, writers and translators in residence.
Jordan Baseman, Rey Conquer, Laura Fisher, Tom Hastings, Maud Haya-Baviera, Sierra Kaag, April Forrest Lin ææŁź, Hannah Machover, Laura Nathan, Nathalie Olah, Irina Razumovskaya, Chebo Roitter Pavez, Matt J Smith and Ariane Schick have responded to collections held in the Holocaust Centre North Archive with works spanning textiles, video, installation, photography, drawing, etching, ceramics, print, found objects, and text.
Their artworks delve into the complex emotional and ethical dimensions of Holocaust history and remembranceâthrough colour, sound, texture, composition, repetition, and gestureâin ways that words or data alone cannot. In mediating stories from the Holocaust Centre North Archive, the Memorial Gestures artists explore how to evoke the layered emotional realities found in personal accounts of mass atrocity and traumaâaware that memorialisation can sometimes displace as much memory as it preserves.
In course of their residencies at Holocaust Centre North, spanning between 6 and 9 months, each artist responded to archive material they felt held contemporary relevance. The resulting works reflect critical, intimate and animated dialogues between their own diverse life experiences and Holocaust history.
Through their works, the artists have engaged with the experiences of Jewish mill workers in Yorkshire (including at Kagan Textile Works), the intergenerational trauma of children of Holocaust survivors, marginalised Roma and LGBTQ+ stories, letters of families desperately seeking safety abroad and the final telegrams between loved ones.
By giving physical form to archive material, these works invite audiences into a dialogue with historyâone that resonates powerfully amid a global rise in authoritarianism, antisemitism, ethnic and religious conflict, and mass displacement.
Memorial Gestures compels us to engage, even when it might be easier to look away. We hope that by doing so, we can build a culture of care towards stories of trauma, foster greater resilience against a contemporary politics of dehumanisation and create space for a culture of solidarity. This harkens back to the very aim motivating Holocaust survivors to come together in the mid 1990âs to form the organisation and community that would grow into Holocaust Centre North.
As well as visual art, the works of resident writers and translators also form part of the exhibition. Tom Hastings, Rey Conquer, Sierra Kaag and Nathalie Olah have been commissioned by Holocaust Centre North to share works-in-progress from their forthcoming book-length projects.
Memorial Gestures runs from Friday 6th to Saturday 28th June 2025 at The 1912 Mill, Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley, Pudsey, West Yorkshire. The exhibition opens on Thursday 5 June at 6pm. Free tickets to our opening night are available here.
Curated by Holocaust Centre Northâs Paula Kolar, Memorial Gestures has been generously supported by The Ernest Hecht Charitable Foundation, Arts Council England, The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and the Henry Moore Foundation.
Throughout the exhibition, Holocaust Centre North will host public and private events, talks, and tours designed to engage diverse communities with contemporary art and narratives of migration, persecution, resilience, and survival.
Featured Artworks
1. The Gaps Between the Unforgettable (2023) – April Forrest Lin ææŁź
Video 5 min 13 sec Holocaust Centre North Archive, courtesy of the Black, Kubie, and Simon families
The Gaps Between the Unforgettable explores Holocaust Centre North’s conflicting and complex position as steward and curator of public memory. Materials from the archive are enlarged, held, and repositioned â an invitation to consider the care, labour, and intention that goes behind sustaining an archive and the stories it contains. Simultaneously, The Gaps Between the Unforgettable urges us to consider a formation of history that also includes those who do not get to be documented, and whose images do not survive long enough to become archivable.
With thanks to the Black, Kubie, and Eger families whose collections feature in the work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
Shown in the film is a toy fort that Tom Kubie won and played with as a young child. Tom, his parents and his elder brothers came to the UK as refugees from Czechoslovakia in July 1939, when Tom was four years old. Many of their extended family were murdered in the Holocaust. Holocaust Centre North, courtesy of the Kubie family.
2. If By Night, A Stranger (2025) – Maud Haya-Baviera
2025. Video 2 min 51 sec
Maud Haya-Bavieraâs If By Night, A Stranger takes inspiration from the letters of Alice Mendel, who sought refuge for herself and her daughter following her husbandâs incarceration in Buchenwald during the November Pogrom in 1938. The video features two women in conversation through the lens of the camera, shown in alternating frames. Oneâplayed by the artistâperforms a staged expression of emotion; the other attempts to interpret these gestures into British Sign Language. As meaning repeatedly slips from reach, both women eventually face the camera in silence, caught in a moment of helplessness. Played on a loop, the allegory gains in poignancy by repeated watch.
In If By Night, A Stranger, Haya-Baviera gives form to questions shared by many of the Memorial Gestures artists: How can we translate and communicate the emotions and experiences of Holocaust survivors and their murdered relatives? Can we ever fully understand?
This is the first in a series of four works created by Haya-Baviera during her residency at Holocaust Centre North.
With thanks to the Mendel family, whose collection inspired this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
3. Archeology of Absence (2025) – Irina Razumovskaya
2025. Ceramic slabs, suspended by chain, 70 x 100 x 6 cm.
âIn the back of my mind,â spoken by Charlotte âLottieâ Gross (later Gross-Brauer) in the Harris House reunion film, reflects on how trauma lives quietly within. These words anchor Irina Razumovskayaâs Archaeology of Absence, a deeply affecting installation shaped by collections in the Holocaust Centre North Archive and the artistâs own grief. Suspended porcelain slabs, echoing window frames, form a ghostly house defined by voids. Their dual surfaces speak of contrasting worlds: the reverse clad in white tiles, recalling the sanitised spaces of arrival at concentration camps; the front cracked and marked by traces of hands and scratches, resisting erasure. Razumovskaya explores trauma as a lifelong duality, paralleled by her own private loss â carried quietly through moments of joy and ordinariness. This installation is a sanctuary of memory. As Holocaust witnesses fade and history risks distortion, Archaeology of Absence offers not spectacle, but presence: a fragile yet insistent reminder that silence, too, holds stories.
With thanks to the Eger family archive whose collection inspired this work, courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
4. Aching (2024) – Maud Haya-Baviera
2025. Steel, glazed porcelain and Mason Stains 10 x 24 x14 cm
In Maud Haya-Bavieraâs Aching, two steel structures, alluding to a construct reminiscent of incarceration, replace a plinth, which would traditionally be associated with the display of sculptural forms. These steel structures host but also separate two ceramic hands frozen in an attempt to touch. Their delicate and fragile presence is in direct contrast to the harshness of the steel. They appear somehow arrested in a moment of peaceful gesture, yet something is oozing from one of the hands and a red thumb is a sore that the eye canât ignore. This work emerged from a close reading of Alice Mendelâs letters in which she expressed her desperate need to leave a country where she felt trapped and where she and her loved ones were deeply endangered. Her letters are addressed to Gladys Reid, a British woman who with care and kindness, redoubled her efforts to save the Mendel family.
The work speaks of a wound that never fully heals and from which pain continues to seep through, but it also evokes a sense of longing, of love and the desire for proximity.
With thanks to the Mendel family, whose collection inspired this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
5. ‘as far as possible’ (2025) – Hannah Machover
2025. dry point etchings sizes varying between 30 x 21 cm – 84 x 42 cm
Carefully arranged on a display table, the intimate scale of Hannah Machoverâs etchings invites viewers to lean in. Distilled into potent lines are experiences of internment and isolation from loved ones, drawn from letters written by Jewish refugees in Britain who were reclassified as âenemy aliensâ following the countryâs entry into the war in 1939. Her delicate, complex compositions evoke a sense of confinement and hint at vast, interior landscapes of solitude. At once surreal and allegorical, Machover’s compositions centre quiet gestures of care and support: a parcel thoughtfully wrapped, a shirt mended by a loved oneâs hand.
Each of the twelve etchings draws from a rich constellation of references gathered during Machoverâs residency. These include letters from the Carry Gorney and Heinz Skyte collections in the Holocaust Centre North Archive, as well as echoes of lines and imagery found in literature, art history, and the stories passed down in Machoverâs own family, who fled antisemitism in central Europe.
With thanks to Carry Gorney and the Skyte family whose collections inspired this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive. Table by Louie Isaaman-Jones, with initial design by Joseph Bradley Hill. Title booklets designed with Joseph Bradley Hill.
1.1 left sole: âMy aunties smuggled their jewellery in their underwear, nailed into the soles of their shoes, sewn into the lining of their coatsâ (30 x 21 cm) 1.2 right sole: âMy aunties smuggled their jewellery in their underwear, nailed into the soles of their shoes, sewn into the lining of their coatsâ (30 x 21 cm) 1.3 pressed flowers: âsix beautiful dark red carnations from my loverâ (30 x 21 cm) 2.1 tear I, barbed wire: âThe air is very clear.â (30 x 21 cm) 2.2 tear II, letter: âYour old man at the helm.â (30 x 21 cm) 2.3 tear III, parcel: âThose are my wishes for today.â (30 x 21 cm) 3.1 envelope I, feeding the yarn: âWe put the parcels together togetherâ (42 x 30 cm) 3.2 envelope II, dream at the window: âThe curtains would eventually be drawnâ (42 x 30 cm) 3.3 envelope III, close fold: âNext year Iâll do everything.â (42 x 30 cm) 4.1 envelope IV: âI must shorten this letterâ (84 x 42 cm) 4.2 envelope V, repaired shirt: âIâd prefer it if you would keep an eye on buttons and holesâ (84 x 42 cm) 4.3 envelope VI, opened by censor: âYou know very well how I treasure everythingâ (84 x 42 cm)
6. Trying to Bring Back by Magic (2025) – Maud Haya-BavieraÂ
2025. Super 8 film transferred to 4K video file, 2 min 36 sec
Maud Haya-Bavieraâs Trying to Bring Back by Magic unfolds in quiet loops of 16mm film: split-screen footage in which the artist handles replicas of photographs from Holocaust Centre North Archive with a ritualistic, almost spell-like attention. In her hands, black-and-white faces and scenes are conjured, held, and gently made to vanishâappearing like ghosts, disappearing like memories. Set against yellow and violet tablecloths, the images glow faintly, as if lit from within, fragile and luminous against time.
The silent footage is accompanied by a melancholic lullabyâa series of syllables stitched together into song. Beneath the melody, other voices rise and fall, layering the sound like breath, like memory passed from one person to another. It is a chorusâa reminder that remembrance is a connective experience.
With tenderness and wry grace, Haya-Baviera takes on a task that is, in truth, impossibleâbut deeply, desperately wished to be possible: to conjure the presence of those who are no longer here, to reach across time toward lives that ended too soon and too brutally. There is no illusion of bringing them back. But in the flicker of film, in the hush of an image appearing and disappearing beneath her hands, something stirs. She invites us to feel fragile, flickering and real traces, and in that invitation, something returns. Not as it was, but as it lingers in memory: glowing, weightless, and briefly held. Not through magic, but through care.
With thanks to the Kubie family, whose collection features in this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive. Audio produced as part of public workshops held at Manchester Jewish Museum in response to letters from Holocaust Centre North Archive, courtesy of Rachel Mendel. Many thanks to the MJM songwriting group.
7. A Glimpse at the Abyss (2025) – Chebo Roitter Pavez
2025. Installation of pastel drawings on black paper and risograph printed publicationÂ
Across seven panels, Chebo Roitter Pavez weaves together the voices of 16 Holocaust survivors, tracing the spread of Nazi ideology across Europe and the escalating discrimination, persecution, and violence faced by Jewish communities. Set against black paper, his vivid, gestural lines merge writing and drawing into layered visual tapestries that foreground the resilience of Jewish life in the face of centuries-old antisemitismâand, in particular, the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.
Roitter Pavezâs aesthetic is grounded in wide-ranging visual research into the cultural heritage of European Jewry, from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. He draws from the work of Jewish artists whose legacies persist despite historical efforts to erase them.
His effort to chronicle the rise of Nazism is also a reflection on the persistence of fascist ideologies today, and urges viewers to recognise how such narratives can resurface, often in new forms, if left unchallenged.
With thanks to the families whose collections feature in this work: Liesel Carter, John Chillag, Ibi Ginsburg, Arek Hersh, Martin Kapel, Klaus Samson, Trude Silman, Ruth & Ernest Sterne & the families of John Martins, Joanna Leser, Tom Kubie, Heinz Skyte & Iby Knill â Chris Knill & Pauline Kinch. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
1 – THERE IS STILL LIGHT, THEREFORE WE CAN SEE. Fortunate enough to tell a story. (150 x 145 cm)
2 – ALL COLORS ARE PRESENT IN A SINGLE BEAM OF LIGHT. Assimilation and Difference. (150 x 190 cm)
3 – EVERYTHING IS WITHIN GRAVITYâS PULL – A POINT IS REACHED, BEYOND WHICH THERE IS NO RETURN. Country and city (150 x 75 cm)
4 – A COLLAPSE THAT TEARS APART THE FABRIC OF SPACE & TIME. Manifestations of violence.(150 x 100 cm)
5 – SINGULARITY TRIES TO ENGULF MULTIPLICITY. Learning Environment and Yellow Stars.(150 x 100 cm)
6 – VASTNESS IS CRUMPLED INTO A SINGLE POINT OF INFINITE DENSITY. Anschluss, Kristallnacht and 1939. (150 x 150 cm)
7 – THE VOID WILL REMAIN UNTIL THE END OF TIME, CASTING AN UNKNOWABLE SHADOW. The Universal Holocaust (150 x 150 cm)
A Glimpse at the Abyss – Early recollections of racism, absolute power and instrumentalised cruelty. Gold risography over black paper book, 14.85 x 21 cm
8. These Were Not Simple Deaths (2023) – Jordan Baseman
2023. Video, 20 min 38 secÂ
These Were Not Simple Deaths features Lilian Black OBE, reflecting on her father Eugene Blackâs experiences during and after the Holocaust, as well as her own deep sense of responsibility as the daughter of a survivor. Eugene was the only member of his immediate family to survive, apart from his elder brother. He was liberated from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after enduring unimaginable suffering, including forced labour at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In the film, Lilian recounts how she first learned about her fatherâs past by accident during childhood, and how that discovery shaped their later journey together to the sites of his imprisonment. Her voice is accompanied by images of tall, mature trees moving gently in the breeze beneath a deep, midnight blue sky. It is early spring, and the trees are just beginning to bud. The camera never reveals the ground or surrounding environmentâonly the crowns of the trees, illuminated by golden light, rising above a darkened landscape. Gradually, the sound of passing traffic emerges, anchoring the scene in the present and hinting at a contemporary, urban setting.
Lilian Black was a passionate advocate for Holocaust education. She served as Chair of the Holocaust Survivorsâ Friendship Association and was the founding force behind Holocaust Centre North. The original audio of her interview, recorded by Dr Tracy Craggs in 2016, forms the emotional core of this work.
With thanks to Lilian Black & Frank Griffiths. Courtesy of Mattâs Gallery (London), Jordan Baseman and Holocaust Centre North Archive.
9. Unpicking – The Gannex and I (2025) – Laura Nathan
2025. InstallationÂ
Laura Nathanâs site-specific installation Unpicking: The Gannex and I interlaces textiles, print, video, sound, and archive photography to tell a story of trauma, resilience, and repairâechoing the artistâs own heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.
Driven by a desire to learn from other survivors and their descendants Nathan undertook this exploration through a tactile dialogue with a Gannex coat. Gannex fabric was invented by Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor Joseph Kagan in 1951 and at the peak of its success the Kagan Textiles Ltd factory employed up to 1,000 people in Yorkshire.
Over the course of eight months, the threads of one coat were picked apart alongside the life story of its inventor. The first of two video works in this installation shows the artist’s life-sized hands, working to separate panel from panel, stitch from stitch, and finally single wefts from warps. Three dry point etchings document the marks made by the artist in her rigorous unpicking process. The composites of the coat are displayed on a table in neatly arranged piles.
A second video traces Nathanâs attempt to reweave the fabric on a small loom. She knots together salvaged threads, coaxing them back into alignment. The result is a delicate and imperfect textile, its uneven weave visibly interrupted by the scars of its own makingâknots, gaps, and sudden shifts in tension.
Nathanâs laborious interrogations took place while listening to the words of those who worked at Kagan Textiles Ltd and elsewhere in Yorkshireâs textile industry. The gallery space (itself an old textile mill) is filled with the sounds of weaving looms and the voices of Holocaust survivors, refugees and immigrants who built new lives here. This included South Asian migrants who experienced the Partition of India in 1947.
With thanks to the families whose collections feature in this work: Ibi & Val Ginsburg, Hannah Goldstone & Mike Wertheim, Jen Kagan, Iby Knill, Chris Knill, Pauline Kinch, and Julia Kinch. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive
White Line Project, held by Heritage Quay at the University of Huddersfield: Dr Nasim Hasnie, Mohammed Hanif Asad, Sajida Ismail, Mahamood Kler, Gian Singh Sahota.
10. Manny (2025) – Ariane Schick
2025. Installation of carpet, table, overhead lamp, projection, and artist bookÂ
Interrupting the gallery space with its vivid orange carpet, Ariane Schickâs installation invites visitors into a snapshot of the life of Emanuel Culman and his parents, Holocaust survivors Edith and Emil Culman. Emanuelâknown as âMannyâ to friends and familyâlends his name to the installation and its two parts: a book and a frame-by-frame animation. Contrasting in their approach to time, emotion, and form, the two works offer a complementary perspective on intergenerational trauma. The installation is shaped in part by Schickâs own family history as the descendant of Holocaust refugees.
Manny (book) is a tender and expansive portrait of a family, beginning with Mannyâs birth in 1945 and ending with his death. Across 750 pages, letters and notes between Manny and his parents trace a lifelong bondâfilled with love, frustration, humour, and longing. Too vast to read straight through, the book invites quiet moments of discovery, as readers encounter Mannyâs voice in vivid, personal letters sent from the U.S. to his parents in Leeds. Alongside these, Schick includes a selection of photographs by Edith Culman. Hundreds of such images, now held in the Holocaust Centre North Archive, depict everyday life with warmth, humour, and a striking emotional sensitivity.
Superimposed onto Manny (book) is a frame-by-frame animation of the same name. Inspired by a drawing from the Culman collection, Schick brings to life an anthropomorphised 1970s American car, whose shifting expressionsâjoy, love, confusion, sadnessâplay out as its wheels continue to turn.
By focusing on the post-1945 lives of Edith, Emil, and Manny, Ariane Schick invites us into a story of survival rarely toldâa story that celebrates ordinary and universal human experiences in the wake of trauma and honours the lasting contributions to art, counterculture and community made by Holocaust survivors.
With thanks to the Culman family who collection features in this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
11. The Artist and the FĂŒhrer (2025)Â – Sierra Kaag
2025. Wooden plinth with book and projection of film produced by Sierra Kaag and Paula KolarÂ
Sierra Kaag’s work-in-progress explores the journeys of objects from their origins, through the Holocaust, to their arrival in the Holocaust Centre North Archive. Her focus is a collection of books that once belonged to Hugo Friedmann, brought by him into the ghetto-camp of Theresienstadt and used as part of a small library there.
For this exhibition, Kaag draws attention to a single title: Der KĂŒnstler und der FĂŒhrer (The Artist and the Leader) by Max Liebermann. She presents a copy of the same edition held in the Holocaust Centre North Archive, originally donated by the Kubie family. The accompanying film, created in collaboration with curator Paula Kolar, reflects on the journey of the Friedmann family, the trajectory of the books, and the threads that bind them.
With thanks to the Kubie family whose collection features in this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
Film contains excerpt from âTheresienstadt: A Documentary Film, 1944â by Kurt Gerron and Ivan Fric. Archival reference: RG-60.0269. Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The book, âDer KĂŒnstler und der FĂŒhrerâ (The Artist and the Leader), by Max Liebermann, belonged to Hugo Friedmann, uncle of child refugee Tom Kubie. Hugo, his wife Hildegard and their children Hans Georg and Liselotte were deported from Vienna to Theresienstadt ghetto-camp in 1942. Much to Hildegardâs dismay, Hugo used much of his luggage allowance to bring his books into Theresienstadt with him. The couple were later deported to Auschwitz, where Hildegard was murdered in October 1944. Hugo died in the Kaufering subcamp of Dachau in 1945. Another copy of the same edition as that held in the Holocaust Centre North Archive is on display in this installation.
Holocaust Centre North, courtesy of the Kubie family.
12. Hard Lands (2025)Â – Maud Haya-Baviera
2025. Video, 4 min 32 secÂ
Hard Lands was filmed on the site of a former concentration camp and features haunting images of a desolate French countryside in winter. It is here that the artistâs grandfather was interned during the Second World War.
The traces of the camp are just visible in the overgrown structures and abandoned houses – their windows either boarded up or existing as gaping openings to a dark emptiness within. The accompanying soundtrack consists of a sweeping and relentless melody, created by a synthetic chorus. It highlights and contrasts the lifeless visuals, drawing out the emotions and experiences buried deep in the foundations of the landscape.
On her pilgrimage the artist encountered others who had travelled to the site, seeking to see what is no longer there. Hard Lands is the final and most personal of the works presented by Haya-Baviera in this exhibition. It was also the first work the artist made during her residency, a personal overture of sorts, setting the tone for a body of work that rings and wrings with the urgency of mediating Holocaust history at a time when racist and anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise across Europe.
13. â§175â (2025) – Matt SmithÂ
2025. Printed photographs mounted on boards, ceramic tiles with graphite inscriptions, kiln fired and mounted on board. 65 x 60 cmÂ
§175 was the legal code used to criminalise same-sex desire in Germany. Originally implemented in the 19th century, it was fervently expanded and strictly enforced under Nazi rule. Matt J Smithâs §175 consists of three works combining ceramics and photographic collage.
At the centre of the installation, small clay brick tiles form a blank grid. From a list of 231 pink triangle prisoners murdered in a Sachsenhausen subcamp, 175 names were carefully inscribed in graphite. During firing, the graphite burned awayâerasing the record, as their lives had been.
In 1935, §175 was expanded upon: men could now be imprisoned for 5 years for a quick kiss or a touch that lingered too long. By 1944 no physical contact needed to have taken place, with just the intention of homosexual behaviour enough to lead to incarceration.
The photographs on the left panel show images from Holocaust Centre Northâs Archive. In these photos same sex desire could be inferred, even if they depict groups of friends, colleagues, brothers, sisters or cousins. None of the individuals shown are known to have been gay. And yet, in a culture of widespread surveillance and persecution, even innocent gestures of affection between people of the same sex could become subject to scrutiny.
Smithâs work reflects on how such a culture of generalised suspicion affected those directly targeted, but also shaped how people related to each other more broadlyâhow they moved, how they touched, how they were seen. His interest lies in understanding how persecution reshaped behaviours, relationships, and the meanings that could be projected onto ordinary images.
In the Holocaust Centre North Archive, the belongings of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution are cared for and their memories are protected by loved ones. Each family was contacted before the use of photographs was granted.
The panel to the right depicts two images from a Nazi medical publication. Some pink triangle prisoners were offered potential early release from camps if they agreed to castration. The images show the same pink triangle prisoner before and after being castrated. We do not know his name and can only assume his permission was not sought before publication. Unwilling to reproduce the framed images, the artist cut them from the pages of the original publication.
The persecution of gay men did not end at liberation. Surviving pink triangle prisoners after liberation from concentration camps were often rearrested based on Nazi evidence and reimprisoned if they had not completed their sentence. §175 remained in the West German criminal code until 1994. Shame stopped many families reuniting with their pink triangle relatives or remembering them publicly, perpetuating the erasure of their lives and suffering from collective memory.
With thanks to the families whose collections feature in this work: Vera Banasch, Michelle Green, John Martins and family, Edith Spencer, and the Dalton, Hartland and Lennard families. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
14. Space Between (2023)Â – Laura Fisher
2023. Monotypes on 240 gsm Arches Johannot paper, 56 x 76 cm. Graphite on 160gsm Velin dâArches paper, 48 x 64 cmÂ
Space Between is a series of monotypes which mediate the relationship between loss and presence. Created in March 2023 with collaboration from Tom Kubieâa Holocaust survivor who escaped to England from Czechoslovakia with his family in 1939. This series is based on the hand gestures of Tomâs family members, traced from photographs in albums that were recovered after the war.
The images offer an intimate elegy to a lost world, capturing moments of tenderness and affection preserved in prewar family snapshots. In these drawings, attention is given to what often goes unnoticedâthe space between hands, the gaps in memory, the outlines of what once was. Here, the visible shapes suggest memory and presence; the spaces around them speak to absence and the things we cannot fully know.
With thanks to the Kubie family whose collection inspired this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
15. Tausend KĂŒsse (2023)Â – Laura Fisher
2023. Artist book, cotton thread embroidered on wool felt, 15 x 17Â x 2.5 cmÂ
This artistâs book is based on a photograph and letter given by Hilel Erner to his wife and children before the family were separated in 1940. Using a printed scan of the letter as a guide, Laura Fisher carefully embroidered Hilelâs handwritten words in thread, preserving both his message and his handwriting through touch and time.
The letter reads: Damit meine beiden Kinder nicht vergessen wie ihr Papa aussieht schicke ich dieses Bild, in der Hoffnung das sie es genau so lieb haben wie als ich bei euch wĂ€re. Tausend KĂŒsse und alles gute fĂŒr mein(e) Frau und die Kinder. Hilel
English translation: So that my two children do not forget what their papa looks like, I send this picture, in the hope that they will hold it just as dear as if I were with you. A thousand kisses and all good wishes for my wife and the children. Hilel
The field of small red xâs embroidered on the cover of the book references the phrase Tausend KĂŒsse (A Thousand Kisses), from which the piece takes its name.
With thanks to the Erner family whose collection features in this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
16. Red Cross Blankets (2023)Â – Laura Fisher
2023. Knitted blankets,100% combed cotton yarn, 80 x 136 cm, 150 x 250 cmÂ
These knitted blankets are based on telegrams and letters in the Holocaust Centre North Archive. Often sent through organisations like the Red Cross, these brief messages were sometimes the only way for people imprisoned in concentration camps to reach their loved ones. Though limited in words, the messages carried deep feelingsâof warmth, hope, and solidarity. Faithfully magnified in the form of knitted blankets, the artwork gives physical presence to these fragile connections, with the aim of honouring the human need for closeness in the face of separation and uncertainty.
MILLIONEN KĂSSE AUCH EUER BRUDER. Mama With thanks to Michelle Green, courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
English translation: Dearest children. I’m very worried, last message from March. We’re all healthy. I hope you are too. Message from Dad: A million kisses. Your brother too, Mum.
Telegram donated by second-generation Holocaust survivor, Michelle Green. Michelleâs grandmother Gisella sent this telegram from Belgium to Michelleâs aunt, Aranka in Harrogate. Aranka, along with Michelleâs mother, Lili, came to the UK to work in domestic service in 1938-1939. Tragically, the family left behind, including Michelleâs grandparents, Gisella and Josef, as well as her uncle Kurt, were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. Holocaust Centre North Archive, courtesy of Michelle Green.
Heaps of love kisses yours henry mendel With thanks to Rachel Mendel, courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
Hast du nicht Schnackerl? With thanks to the the Kubie family, courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
23.4.34 With thanks to the Kubie family, courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
To wish you a prosperous life With thanks to the Kubie family, courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
17. Conversation Time (2025)Â – Rey Conquer
Paperback publication, translations of archive letters with translator essay. Text excerpts installed on gallery windows, vinyl on glass.
Conversation Time is a collection of translations from letters held in the Holocaust Centre North Archive, written between 1938-1945 by refugees from and victims of Nazi persecution. The selection focuses on greetings, formulae, writing about writing â the ordinary and repeated phrases that people used to express themselves to friends and family members from whom they were separated, not knowing when or if they would receive a reply. Stories of displacement and persecution, anxiety and longing are communicated indirectly, pressing through from behind the written repetitions and everyday language visible to us through the letters’ dates.
An afterword relates the experience of the residency and the challenges of translating these letters in the present day â how to convey the ordinariness, what it means to be a human translator in an age of machines, and how to let the resonances between the letters, and between the letters and present day experiences, sound out.
With thanks to Elisabeth Bernheim, Michelle Green, Martin Hyman, Joanna Leser, D. Rivlin, Trude Silman and the Anysz, Hartland, Kubie, Leser, Schatzberger and Vernon families. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
18. THE SECRET OF SURVIVAL IS NOT TO BE NOTICEDÂ (2025)Â – Nathalie Olah
2025. Takeaway broadsides. A2 Print
This new work by writer-in-residence Nathalie Olah is presented as a stack of takeaway broadsidesâidentical prints, each offering a glimpse into her forthcoming book, to be announced later this year. Her work offers a meditation on survival, aesthetics, and belonging. Visitors are warmly invited to take a copy. As the stack slowly disappears, the work traces a quiet choreography of care.
Rooted in the archive of Holocaust survivor Iby Knill, the text weaves together historical reflection and philosophical inquiry. It draws out the subtle but persistent connections between Ibyâs handmade garmentsâscrapbooks of stitches, notes on fabric, acts of mendingâand broader questions about who is granted the space to be seen, remembered, and understood in their full humanity.
Olah writes from a position of inheritance. Her own background as a descendant of a Romani man from East Hungary offers a way of listening across the silences that characterise the archive. In this crossing between Jewish and Romani memory, between personal and collective loss, she does not seek resolution. Instead, she asks how threads might be held together in the face of erasure.
In Ibyâs story, aesthetics is presented as a method of survival: clothes turned inside out, hems repaired in secret, dignity expressed in style and gesture. Against the violence of classificationâof being ranked, measured, deformedâbeauty re-emerges as something unruly, a soft defiance and a refusal to disappear.
Olahâs book, the outcome of her Memorial Gestures residency, will be announced later in 2025.
Klutz is a dazzling, unsettling work of memoir, travel writing, and cultural criticism that begins in the Holocaust Centre North Archive in Huddersfield and leads to the haunted streets of Berlin. Midway through a residency, Tom Hastings discovers that his grandmother once lived just a short walk from Else Lubranczyk, a Jewish seamstress whose lettersâpreserved in the archiveâwere written to her daughter who fled Nazi Germany in 1939, a year after Hastingsâ own grandmother.
Else and her niece, Steffi Levy, were deported to Theresienstadt in 1943. Following the traces left in Elseâs lettersâof ordinary life, longing, recrimination, and attempts to escapeâHastings walks the streets, visits the shops, and reads the memorial plaques that now mark a vanished world.
What unfolds is a deeply personal journey: a reckoning with Jewish inheritance, uneasy memory, and the crackdown on solidarity. Klutz is about stumbling toward something and not getting thereâand finding something else instead.
With thanks to Barry Anysz whose collection features in this work. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.
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20. Poetry After Auschwitz: Walking in West Cornwall with the Ghost of Great-Aunt Hilde (2024) – Ben Barkow
2024. Paperback publication, poetryÂ
A series of linked poems, in which Ben Barkow explores the lives of his grandparents and their siblings and those of his parents. By directly going up against Adornoâs famous dictum that to write poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric, he probes the limits of representation in the context of the overwhelming need to let the suffering of the victims speak. Implicitly he articulates the haunting and haunted reality of a life lived in the long shadow of the Holocaust.
With thanks to M., H., and B. Barkow.
Buy the book & support Holocaust Centre North at: https://holocaustcentrenorth.org.uk/shop/