Ghetto                         

In Ghetto neither eye nor imagination has any way of escape. The horizon has disappeared from this landscape without vistas; all signs of nature have vanished, too. Holocaust history does not proclaim its message; we must evacuate what we can from the ruins. Sheets of slate have moved aside as if from a tomb, to reveal a star-shaped scar leading into an obscure tunnel lined with the facades of crumbling structures—the former ghetto. Like forlorn Dantes without benefit of Virgil, we are forced to pursue the fate of European Jewry into the threatening depths below the inert stone surface, following a narrow corridor between lifeless brick walls. But our obligation is clear: memory and commemoration allow no other route. Even the pale yellow cloth from Stars of David once worn on victims' breasts points toward the ominous entry-way, as if all energy in the painting were focused on this journey into the heart of holocaust darkness.

And what awaits us at the end? Tiny glimmers of reddish light, like the eyes of demons, or the openings of twin crematorium ovens, beckon from the abyss, an unholy glow that evokes for us the fate of a people. We have the choice of moving the slabs of stone back in place and burying them forever, or accepting the strenuous duty of mining the evidence of their demise and keeping it steady in consciousness for our own and future generations.

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