Striking and powerful dedication to Holocaust victims

THE word ‘Holocaust’ means only one thing in the modern world, but for how long will this continue to be the case?

Well, forever of course, seems to be the answer that Sheila Millward is making in her Gallery 150 exhibition of imagery dedicated to the memory of the residents of the Terezin ghetto.

The Nazis had set the ghetto up during WW2 as a Jewish centre for creative activity. Jewish musicians, artists, intellectuals and their families were relocated to this apparent mecca, only to find that it was in reality a staging post for the Auschwitz extermination camp.

The show is dominated by an installation of violins hanging like victims on two rows of free-standing panels that end with an image of symbolic sacrifice against the back wall. It’s a strikingly powerful way to lead the spectator in and a suitably solemn way to establish the tone and agenda for the reliefs, collages, and paintings that line the rest of the walls.

There’s an earthy, tactile quality and a rough-edged beauty to these works which are made appropriately enough from eroded and distressed materials that cleverly reflect the frustrated creativity of the town’s talented residents and the cruel fate that awaited them.

Additional material provides harrowing details of the background to the creative activity that took place in the ghetto, including a recording from musical scores that were retrieved after the war.

The show has been timed to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27. The ragged power of the work stands both as a fitting tribute and statement of sympathy for the victims but it also serves as a gesture of outrage against the perpetrators of such a barbarous act of cruelty.

Peter McCarthy

Caption:

Sheila Millward’s exhibition, An Emotional Response to Terezin, at Gallery 150 in Leamington. Picture submitted.