The Passover holiday is behind us and with it the Exodus from Egypt, about which the Sages said: "The ministering angels sought to sing a song, the Holy One, blessed be He, said: The work of my hands is drowned in the sea, and you sing a song"?
It is customary to interpret this as follows: Not only is God not happy about the death of the wicked Egyptians, who endanger Israel and are about to be punished, but He also regrets their loss.
The classical commentary that appears in the Babylonian Talmud shows a 'humanist-modernist' aspect in the Sages, which focuses on the enemy's situation even at the time of the great salvation of the Children of Israel.
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Our sages teach us to know how to look at the enemy and see what is happening in his arena. Now, the issue of coping with memory in enemy countries - those that speak German - is increasingly being raised.
Seventy years later.
Countless words and films have been written on the subject of the Holocaust - and we as Jews and Israelis experience it from a very specific perspective, the prism of the victim who was abused, who was discriminated against on the basis of his racial background, which made it possible to do terrible things to him.
And what happens in enemy countries?
There the story is even more complex and the silences are heavy.
In Germany, under American pressure, reparations were instituted and museums were built. There are well-known stories of children of Nazi families who converted and even repented, in response to the actions of their ancestors, and there are also artists who have addressed this in their works.
For example, the artist Friedmann Darmstadt, an Austrian from a senior Nazi family that believed in 'racial improvement', discovered his family's dubious past in his adulthood and decided to expose it and discuss it among his family, who were not averse to this innovative initiative (they made sure to cut out the portraits of their SS-fighting uncles in their home immediately after the war).
Friedman does not hide any detail and with meticulous care exposes the mechanism of injustice that his ancestors advocated.
The meeting in Vienna
As an artist, he looked for a Jewish partner, the son of Holocaust survivors, and found Shimon Lev. The son of Prof. Ze'ev Lev, founder of the Lev Institute, who found himself the only survivor from a large and extended family from the city of Vienna, Austria.
Shimon Lev, as a photographer and artist, understood that all of his works touched in one way or another on the dominant past, and decided, as part of a roots journey, to stay in Vienna as part of a scholarship they offered him, and to engage in artistic activity on the subject, and that is how he met Friedman Darmstadt.
The meeting was not easy, but both artists understood that delving into family archives was necessary to understand their identities.
Together they created a joint exhibition involving maps, archives, and family photos.
Shimon Lev notes that what surprised him most was the amount of photos, letters, and materials his artist friend had.
""We barely have a few photos that Dad received and a stack of censored letters, and as an academic archivist, I'm just constantly searching for what doesn't exist, and can no longer be obtained.".
Part of the exhibition has been on display since last week in Vienna, and another part of it, entitled 'North and Visible,' is on display since the end of Holocaust Remembrance Day at the 'Art Shelter' in Jerusalem.
On Monday, April 27, a gallery discussion will be held, in which films related to the topic will be screened, with the directors discussing their film.
Shimon Lev will present a joint film he made with his partner, and Nurit and Emmanuel Cohen will screen a documentary-comedy in which they show how Jewish family members deal with the German enemy.
• The writer is an art lecturer at Amen College, and a curator at the Art Shelter Gallery, 7 Yehuda HaMaccabi St., Jerusalem. Opening hours: Mon, Tue, Thu. from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM and Fri. from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM.
