2024. Paperback publication, poetry 

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 Adorno’s 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/

2025. Paperback publication, creative non-fiction 

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 letters—preserved in the archive—were
written to her daughter who fled Nazi Germany in 1939, a year
after Hastings’ own grandmother.

Else and her niece, Steffi Levy, were deported to Theresienstadt
in 1943. Following the traces left in Else’s letters—of ordinary life,
longing, recrimination, and attempts to escape—Hastings 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 there—and
finding something else instead.

With thanks to Barry Anysz whose collection features in this work.
Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.


Buy the book & support Holocaust Centre North at:
https://holocaustcentrenorth.org.uk/shop/

2025. Takeaway broadsides. A2 Print

This new work by writer-in-residence Nathalie Olah is presented
as a stack of takeaway broadsides—identical 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 Iby’s handmade garments—scrapbooks of stitches, notes on fabric, acts of mending—and 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 Iby’s 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 classification—of being
ranked, measured, deformed—beauty re-emerges as something
unruly, a soft defiance and a refusal to disappear.

Olah’s book, the outcome of her Memorial Gestures residency,
will be announced later in 2025.

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 –
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 – 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.

2023. Knitted blankets,100% combed cotton yarn, 80 x 136 cm, 150 x 250 cm 

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 feelings—of
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 KÜSSE 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.
Michelle’s grandmother Gisella sent this telegram from Belgium to Michelle’s aunt, Aranka
in Harrogate. Aranka, along with Michelle’s mother, Lili, came to the UK to work in domestic
service in 1938-1939. Tragically, the family left behind, including Michelle’s 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.

2023. Artist book, cotton thread embroidered on wool felt, 15 x 17 x 2.5 cm 

This artist’s 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 Hilel’s 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 wäre. Tausend Küsse und alles
gute für 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 x’s embroidered on the cover of the book
references the phrase Tausend Küsse (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.

2023. Monotypes on 240 gsm Arches Johannot paper, 56 x 76 cm. Graphite on 160gsm Velin d’Arches paper, 48 x 64 cm 

Space Between is a series of monotypes which mediate the
relationship between loss and presence. Created in March 2023
with collaboration from Tom Kubie–a Holocaust survivor who
escaped to England from Czechoslovakia with his family in 1939.
This series is based on the hand gestures of Tom’s 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 unnoticed—the 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.

2025. Printed photographs mounted on boards, ceramic tiles with graphite inscriptions, kiln fired and mounted on board. 65 x 60 cm 

§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 Smith’s §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 away—erasing 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
North’s 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.

Smith’s work reflects on how such a culture of generalised suspicion affected
those directly targeted, but also shaped how people related to each other
more broadly—how 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.

2025. Video, 4 min 32 sec 

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 artist’s 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.

2025. Wooden plinth with book and projection of film produced by Sierra Kaag and Paula Kolar 

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 Künstler
und der Führer (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 ‘Theresienstadt: A Documentary Film,
1944’ by Kurt Gerron and Ivan Fric. Archival reference: RG-60.0269.
Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The book, ‘Der Künstler und der Führer’ (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 Hildegard’s 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.