Kristallnacht
I returned to the Pie Factory Margate in 2022 with my exhibition Upwelling. Kristallnacht continues the story of the Threads retrospective at the Pie Factory Margate 2019. The Labyrinth searches for meaning in the remnants that remain.
My mother Bina Korngold left Vienna in 1939 to escape from the Nazis. Bina’s father and mother Markus and Bruche sent many letters to Bina and her brothers Leo and Benno. They help show the route she travelled when she became a refugee, or a person seeking refuge.
Markus and Bruche Korngold were killed on 9th September 1942.
Bina met my father Reg Marks at a refugee centre in Milford on Sea where he worked. Bina and Reg married in 1939 and my sister Gita was born in 1940. Reg came home in 1945. I was born in 1948.
After the war Benno and Leo settled in Australia. Bina stayed in England until she died in 1997. Once she learned English she never spoke German again.
Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany and Austria on 9th November 1938.
The German authorities looked on without intervening.
The name Kristallnacht literally Crystal Night comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed.
Remembering my family known and unknown. The installation is dedicated to the preciousness of all human life.
Soundscape: Alex Caldon. Film: Barbarita Marks.
