Yehouda Chaki: Mi Makir

Chaki never met his grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins, as they were all killed in Auschwitz. Born in Athens in 1938, he along with his parents and younger brother survived the Shoah by assuming Greek Orthodox identities and living in the countryside with a Christian family. In 1945, the four of them moved to Israel, where the artist experienced the daily trauma of Mi Makir (“Do you know this person?”), a national radio show that broadcast the messages of people appealing to the public for information on missing individuals or family members.

The exhibition Mi Makir features a collection of 117 portraits that represent the artist’s relatives who were erased from his life, as well as the millions of others who perished. Anonymous depictions of Nazi internment camp victims, each work bears a number in the top left corner corresponding to an actual person who was exterminated. These drawings attest to the torment, terror, agony and desperation that people suffered.

A sculpture composed of piles of books scattered on the floor recalls the infamous burnings of books by Jewish, liberal and leftist authors who were deemed un-German by Nazi student groups. It also evokes the shattered glass and ruins of vandalized Jewish homes and businesses as well as the synagogues that were burned by violent mobs throughout Germany during Kristallnacht, on the night of November 9, 1938.