Tonwerk, German for clay factory.

In the fall of 1941, the Nazi government in Germany pivoted from persecuting Jews to exterminating them, laying the groundwork for the Final Solution. On September 15, 1941, the German Secret State Police (Gestapo) promulgated an order restricting travel by Jews. That day, Tonwerk Heppenheim appealed to the police to grant special permission for my grandmother’s uncle, Theodor Israel, to travel from his home village, Elmshausen, to the company’s clay factory in Heppenheim, where, as a forced laborer, he made bricks.

Primary source material frames this installation and narrates the struggle of Theodor, his wife Mina, and their teenage son Walter, to navigate the Nazis’ bureaucracy with its countless dead ends. For the Israel family, the hurdles they confronted, designed to fleece them of their possessions, their community, and their humanity, ultimately lead to their murder.

Inspired by Theaster Gates’s devotional, remembrance multimedia exhibitions, this installation explores participatory memory practices by inviting visitors to engage through sight, sound, and touch. While Gates incorporates salvaged material to bring the past present, the only objects recovered from the Israel family’s life are bricks from their house rescued from demolition by Lauteral-Elmshausen community leader, Frank Maus. This installation exhibits one of the bricks.

It is thanks to Frank that an axis of remembrance extends through the Lauteral-Elmshausen community, as well as the high school students he teaches. Much of the material included in this installation grows out of his efforts. Frank’s students and those of Nikola Kratzmann from the Geschwister-Scholl-Schule, Bensheim, Germany, participated in a video shown in this exhibition.

I am also grateful to my son, Noah Lilienthal, whose music composition of fragmented sound at the heart of this installation represents another axis of remembrance that joins one generation with another. In addition to Noah, performers in his compostion include vocalists Audrey Mills and Jack Canavan, and drummer Jack Warnock. My father, Peter Lilienthal, also contributed film footage to the installation, as well as enthusiastic encouragement and support, for which I am thankful.

On the "documentation" page of this website, Noah's music is paired with Jackson Clark's film visually documenting the Tonwerk installation. I greatly appreciate the breadth of filmmaking skill, aesthetic sensibility, and tremendous care Jackson brings to this project.

The insightful guidance and boundary-pushing encouragement of my professors, advisors, and MFA student cohort gave this exhibition shape. Thank you Atif Akin, Farah Al Khoury, Rick Anderson, Gerry Beegan, Leona Cheung, Kerri Fallat, Sanaz Feizi Khankandi, Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, Marc Handelman, Heather Hart, Asad Pervaiz, Chris Rypkema, Mindy Seu, Jared Stark, and Jacqueline Thaw; as well as Randy Hemminghaus, Jahi Sabater, Rich Siggillino, and Shane Whilden.

Additional support for this installation came from the Arolsen Archives, Buchenwald Memorial Museum, Frankfurt Jewish Museum, Karen Franklin, Gedenk-und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Haerle family, Hessian State Archives Darmstadt and Wiesbaden (Eva Haberkorn and Peter Haberkorn, archivists), Jablow family archives, Lauteral-Elmshausen community, Leo Baeck Institute, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, Oppenheimer family archives, State Museum of Majdanek, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, and Yad Vashem.