The colorful paintings of Hélène Carroll present English letters like B or C and connect their innocence – B for Bird, C for Cone shell – to the Holocaust. B is linked to Belzec, the first extermination camp set up in German-controlled Poland. C is linked to Chelmno, the first concentration camp the Nazis built in occupied Poland near the city of Lodz.
On Monday, the public will be able to hold a virtual conversation with the artist ahead of an opening of her exhibition at Beit Lohamei Hagetaot (The Ghetto Fighters' House - GFH) titled The Memory Keeper, allowing the Israeli public to see the works first shown at the Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History last year.
GFH CEO Yigal Cohen notes that to bring Jewish art all the way from New Zealand "connects people from the different corners of the earth" and that the exhibition "brings with it warm and moving human touch, which connects us at a time when we are meant to maintain social distance and remain indoors."
GFH, located in the Western Galilee, will reopen on Monday and continue to operate under the Green Badge guidelines.
The 26 small paintings, one for each letter of the English alphabet, allow the artist to maintain her deep commitment to honor the memory of the Holocaust, since the darkness of this massive destruction of Jewish life in Europe remained an obsessive compulsion with her throughout her adult life.
“My father was born in the town of Oświęcim,” she said in a recorded lecture held at Aratoi in January 2019, “and my mother survived Auschwitz,” the death camp the Germans built next to that town.
Registration for The Memory Keeper, an online discussion with Hélène Carroll which will take place on Monday February 22 at 8:00 p.m. can be done here.