The most painful image in this show is one that Stojka didn’t paint but is clear in my imagination. It is of a ten year old girl who stands in a deathcamp courtyard. I have been thinking of her since I saw these paintings. I identify with her (she’s a painter!) and feel outraged on her behalf —A ten year old should not see that!
A wave of confusion: it should never have happened (and in one way and another it’s still happening.)
“…on December 16, 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered the deportation of all remaining Sinti and Roma to a concentration camp. The implementing regulations for this order, issued by the RSHA on January 29, 1943, specified that Auschwitz was the place of deportation.As a result of this ruling, the Gypsy family camp known as the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy camp), which existed for 17 months, was set up in Auschwitz-Birkenau sector BIIe.”
“Roma in Auschwitz”*
Ceija Stojka, along with her mother and other members of her family, were sent to Auschwitz in 1943. At the last minute before all the Roma and Sinti were killed there, they were moved to Ravensbruck and then Bergen-Belsen where they were liberated in 1945.
The Stojkas returned to Austria. The genocide of the Roma was not acknowledged and the government continued to treat the Roma as lower class citizens; Cejia Stojka was only allowed to go to school for a short time. Later she became an activist, telling the story of the Roma Holocaust and supporting other oppressed groups. When a group of teenagers accused her of lying because their fathers would never do such things she started to paint, with her children’s art supplies—to prove that these atrocities had really happened. She was 56 years old.
Untitled (Ravensbrück…) is a view of the camp with the women in rows standing in the snow and surrounded by guards with whips. A wagon full of bodies is to the left. Perhaps Mengele who did “experiments” in the Zigeunerlager was measuring the survival rates of inadequately dressed females in the cold.
I believe in these paintings as an absolute proof of Stojko’s experience. I mean I don’t doubt the Holocaust, but I didn’t expect it to be so forcefully recreated. She is the visual equivalent of a reliable narrator and her work caught me completely off-guard—it didn’t matter how much I already “knew” about the Holocaust.
It might seem unrealistic for example that the women are colorfully dressed, but the lesson above mentions that the Roma were allowed to wear their own clothes.* Also that the guards were women.*
And that it is an aerial view—I’ve seen very young children who draw from that perspective. It’s very powerful and utterly sad that a child could “escape” in this way.
(Stojka did not name or date most of paintings)
Here is another heartbreaking example. The train seen from above winding through snow and evergreen trees. Even from inside a boxcar, a turn that sharp would be felt and understood.
Stojka paints like a child, with the concentration span of an adult and an eidetic memory. It is a stunning combination. I mean like being hit on the head.
The only other comparable artist I thought of is Chagall—his work about the pogroms—he is also asserting the truth, but his work is spiritual and metaphorical and Stojka is simple and direct.
Then I thought of Shoa, by Claude Lanzman, a nine and a half hour documentary I saw at Lincoln Center in 1985 and later again on PBS. It consists of interviews with survivors and witnesses with long interludes of riding on a train through the woods which also function as time for the viewer to think. It also broke down my defenses.
Stojka’s desire to convey what she saw and what she experienced led her to try different strategies. I don’t even know if I should use the word “strategies” though—they are attempts to describe other less visual horrors.
A group of black and white drawings are not abstract. They portray images that are more physically experienced than seen. Like this drawing that becomes hands, then human bodies walking away, crowded together or dead and lying on the ground. The sequence continues: Are those children? Is that a guard raising a club? Are the people running?
It is hard to look at and then another obvious and horrible idea: These torments also happened at night.
Another group of black and white drawings are vivid graphic illustrations asking the question: Do you see? The implications—what those open eyes or the waving hand really represent—land after a moment or two.
Many survivors never talked about their experiences. It took Elie Wiesel ten years. He said “Whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness.”** It’s a terrible burden.
I read so many books about the Holocaust in my younger years. I realize now that my youth and my optimism made it easier—I thought the world had turned against fascism because of these horrors becoming public knowledge. I have felt at times that I just don’t want to torture myself with it anymore. How many times can you ask yourself, “Why are people so cruel?”
There is happiness in this show too, thank God. I have become so fond of Ceija Stojka and very grateful that she also painted pictures of her childhood traveling in horse-drawn carts with the Roma. This is an idyllic scene camping by a stream in the countryside. It has the same total grasp of physical space and the same ability to see and remember in detail.
I’m sorry. It’s a terrible photograph, with reflected lights and there I am too, a shadow in the glass.
—CNQ
*Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
**”Elie Wiesel and the Agony of Bearing Witness”
Edna Friedberg, July 9, 2016 “The Atlantic Magazine”