Shibboleth Ż1, 2019 – 2023, corroded mirror, own technique based on the method of Justus von Liebig

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Shibboleth Ż, 2019 – 2023, corroded mirror, own technique based on the method of Justus von Liebig

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Shibboleth Ż, 2019 – 2023, corroded mirror, own technique based on the method of Justus von Liebig

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Shibboleth Ż, 2019 – 2023, corroded mirror, own technique based on the method of Justus von Liebig. Photo documentation of the solo exhibition Mechitza, Arsenał Gallery, Bialystok, 2023. Photos: M. Tym

The object suspended at the intersection of two walls is an immobile hieroglyph of historical memory, shibboleth Ż, a relic stopping the viewer’s perception on the irreversible, non-erasable fact of the Shoah, the appearance of which is Treblinka Extermination Camp here – a place of the beginning of the story about evil, which the artist resumes as a deposit handed over by her ancestors.

The surface of the object/mirror breaks off between the old and the new borderline of the camp, a result of broadening our knowledge of this place’s actual topography, and a symbol of memory as an archive. The opalescent mirror shimmers with colors recollected in testimonies of camp prisoners. The colors of ashes falling from the burned bodies reminded the survivors of that time of iridescent shells of small beetles. But he mirror also reflects the faces of those looking at it today. And perceiving in it not only themselves, but also those whose ashes activate their memory and emotion.

The texture of the object, its austerity, and the way of displaying it bring to mind the staging techniques of Malewicz and Russian icon painters.

The material (cast, weathered, corroded mirror) used in this work relates to the many Jews’ stories during the Shoah – their ways of surviving thanks to their craft skills, mirror manufacturers in this case.

In Hebrew History shibboleth has been used as a password, the way of protection and self-identification. The first letter of the word (Shin) was unpronounceable for the foreigners and something that unmasked them as such. It served therefore as a kind of stigma and exclusion.

In the herstories of the Jewish women it meant two different things: the mark of identity and bond of solidarity but also a danger to be recognized on the aryan side. Letter Shin had to be hidden, so as not to betray the secret of identity.

This is a story which never dies, being endlessly recreated in ever new mutations, and referring also to the present time.

1 First letter of the Polish word Żyd (Jew), a horrible tongue twister.