“Chotzen. Images After Memory”
A collaborative historical and artistic exhibition presented in the “Villa Oppenheim” in Charlottenburg
Paintings and drawings by the Israeli artist Inbar Chotzen-Tselniker will be on view at the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf City Museum’s ‘Villa Oppenheim’ through March 2023. The artist’s works explore how the Chotzen family in Berlin lived during the era of Nazi persecution. The artworks are accompanied by a small historical exhibition about the family’s history, based on the estate that has been preserved at our memorial and education site since 1992.
Everything about this exhibition is unusual: the subject matter, the actors, the objects, and especially the project’s origin. The story focuses on the six members of the Chotzen family, which moved to Johannisberger Straße 3 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in the 1920s. The mother, Elsa, was raised as a Protestant but converted to Judaism when she married. The couple’s four sons grew up celebrating both Jewish and Christian holidays and observing the customs of both faiths. All four boys were enthusiastic and popular members of the Berlin sports club “1892”, where they spent much of their free time. The father, and later the sons, chronicled their family life in photographs, taking pictures on trips and excursions, and pasting their snapshots into albums, which have survived the decades. These images give us a good idea of who the sons — Joseph, Bubi, Erich, and Ulli — and their parents — Elsa and Joseph — were. The only son to survive the Holocaust was Josef, the eldest, who went by the name ‘Eppi’. Years later, Eppi described how at home the family felt in their neighbourhood:
“[…] We had certainly become a well-known family here in the area and had contact with many people over the years … Before the Nazi era, I had no memory of any particular interactions with our neighbours that revealed even a hint of hostility or dislike.”
After the Nazis came to power, however, everything changed for the family. Antisemitism, which until then had played no role in their lives, became a matter of national interest and henceforth affected every aspect of the family’s life. As early as the summer of 1933, Erich was advised to leave school since there was no hope of his graduating from secondary school. Eppi was dismissed by his employer and thereafter only received temporary jobs. His father, who had worked successfully in a company for many years and been promoted to a managerial position there, was now harassed by his co-workers and eventually dismissed from the firm. Describing the atmosphere in his memoirs, Eppi noted:
“It was more than astonishing how an icy wall had come to surrounded us. Communication with those around us very quickly diminished until there was suddenly a marked silence. Only occasionally would someone try to greet us discreetly.”
In 1935, the newly enacted Nuremberg Laws stipulated how “mixed marriages” with “mixed-race children” were to be handled. The four boys and their father were hit hard by the anti-Jewish laws. They were forced to leave their beloved sports club, comply with numerous bans and restrictions, perform forced labour as of 1939, and later to wear the Yellow Star. Eppi was well aware of the Antisemitic prejudices and knew that he and his brothers in no way reflected the image of Jews presented by Nazi propaganda. Eppi described the situation pointedly:
“It certainly was confusing to see four blond, athletic people wearing the Jewish Star as they marched to work. These marches took place often. This did not fit with the Stürmer image or its slander and lies about Jews.”
Three of the brothers married their Jewish girlfriends in late 1941, believing this would protect their wives from deportation; this proved to be a fallacy, however.
Joseph, the boys’ father, died in early 1942. He thus did not live to see his second youngest son, Erich, his son’s wife, and mother-in-law deported to Riga, where they were murdered. The other sons also faced the threat of deportation on a daily basis. In fact, their names were on the deportation lists several times. The boys’ mother Elsa, who was the only family member who could freely move around the city, managed to get her sons’ deportations deferred several times. Elsa also participated in the protests in Rosenstrasse in February/March 1943. In the summer of 1943, however, her efforts failed: Bubi and Ulli were deported to Theresienstadt along with their wives.
For more than a year, Elsa and Eppi — assisted by Eppi’s Czech girlfriend Bozka — sent parcels containing food, cigarettes, which could be bartered, and daily necessities to the ghetto camp. They even received acknowledgement of the packages’ receipt. Eppi described these care package actions as follows:
“The efforts, difficulties, and dangers that had to be overcome in order to get the parcels ready and packed are impossible to imagine today. At least by someone who did not experience the situation that we Jews were in at that time, and certainly by someone who did not live through that time. When the most difficult and dangerous part was done, namely the things at home were ready to be packed, there were the additional problems of not having enough paper, cardboard boxes, and, above all, suitable twine. Then it was off to the post office. In the beginning, when possible, I took the task off my mother's hands. But one time she was there [at the post office with me], (we usually had several parcels), and witnessed their degrading treatment of me – I was wearing the Star after all, and the Jewish names – Israel or Sarah every time – thereafter she did this alone, too. It was all together demoralizing and too much for her!
The most dangerous thing for me without a doubt was obtaining food and whatever else was needed.”
The estate contains 368 acknowledgements of receipt and postcards, representing an almost daily sign of life. But the contact ceased when Bubi, Lisa, Ulli, and Ruth were deported to Auschwitz. After the war, Elsa, and Eppi learned that the brothers had died near Dachau in the spring of 1945. Lisa is believed to have died in Auschwitz. Ruth was the only one to return to Berlin. She immigrated to the United States in 1946.
In the following decades, Elsa Chotzen collected all that remained of her murdered children, including photographs, letters, and documents. When she died in 1982, this family archive was passed on to the only survivor of the Berlin Chotzens, Eppi Chotzen. He proceeded to write his memories in a painful process that took several years:
“In the years after 1945, my mother mentally relived all kinds of experiences, especially the dramatic and terrible ones in her life. And, as the endless conversations with her showed me, she remembered everything in detail. Unfortunately, I did not write down all that she knew, as I had planned to. But now I am in the process of recording — for myself and for those who want to know and should know — what I or we can still remember. […] There is a big difference between dealing ‘historically‘ with intense and dramatic events that took place 40 years ago and actually having objects and letters right in front of you from that time that once belonged to the people who were so dear to you! Much of what was experienced back then becomes very real again.”
In his will, Eppi stipulated that, after his death, this collection and the many different versions of his memoirs should be donated to the House of the Wannsee Conference, a newly founded memorial and educational site run by Gerhard Schoenberner. The historian Barbara Schieb processed the estate on behalf of the institution and authored a book about the family. In the following years, the Chotzens became part of the permanent exhibition at the German Historical Museum. They also were the subject of the second exhibition presented at the House of the Wannsee Conference. A documentary film and website also were created, and stumbling stones were installed on the Johannisberger Strasse in memory of the family members.
In preparation for a trip to the German capital, the Israeli artist Inbar Chotzen entered her family name together with the word “Berlin” into a search engine in 2016 and she received a number of hits. She was stunned because she had known nothing about a Berlin branch of her family. When she was in Berlin, she contacted Barbara Schieb; together the two women reconstructed the connection between the two families: Inbar’s grand grandfather, who had immigrated to Palestine in 1935, was the brother of Joseph Chotzen, the father of the Berlin family.
In the ensuing years, Inbar Chotzen immersed herself in researching the family using her resources as an artist: She studied the surviving photos and made sketches of the family members in order, as she put it, “to get to know them”. She also visited our Joseph Wulf library and scanned all 368 postcards, many of which she designed digitally with drawings portraying the family’s everyday life.
Last year, the idea evolved to create a collaborative exhibition that would incorporate both the family’s history with Inbar’s individual artistic approach to commemorating the Shoah. It was agreed that the Villa Oppenheim, with its large hall for special exhibitions, would be the right place venue for the presentation. Eppi’s memories provided the structure for the historical portion of the show, and the various phases of persecution are presented from his vantage point, rather from that of the perpetrators. Inbar Chotzen’s paintings reflect Eppi’s struggle with the injustices he experienced. In her work, Inbar re-enacts photographed scenes from the life of the family before and during the Nazi era. The images show summer days at Lake Krossin, for example, but also reveal glimpses of the darkness, the evil, and the abyss. Eppi laments:
“They’d known us for many years.
Our demeanour was not fundamentally different!
We did not have a fundamentally different way of life!
We did not look fundamentally different!
We weren’t even exceptionally successful!
We didn't have any unusual qualities!
We were not exceptionally good-looking!
We were not loners!
We didn't have hooked noses! Didn't have flat feet!
And out of six people, only two wore glasses!
We, too, were of modest means!
What was it? And how much of it prevails today?
Was it stupidity? – Indifference? – Egoism?
Were they just mean? – Lacking in character? – Cowardly?
And what made these “honourable” citizens ask: Why did she marry a Jew?! – They were referring to my mother.
Is this still a civilised nation?
Manhunt! - Book burning! – And much more barbarism!”
Accompanying events to the exhibition in the Villa Oppenheim (German & English):
Tour of the exhibition: Sunday, 5 February, 12 p.m.
Lecture: 2 March, 6 p.m. ‘Robert Müller-Stahl: Self-Images in Persecution. Private photographs of Jewish families under National Socialism,’ followed by a discussion with Inbar Chotzen.
Training for educators: 3 March, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. ‘Antisemitism-critical educational approaches to addressing the topic of persecution of “mixed marriages” and “mixed race” individuals based on the example of the Chotzen family.’
Tour of the exhibition: 4.March, 12 p.m. “Chotzen. Images after Memory in the Villa Oppenheim with Inbar Chotzen and Dr. Ruth Preusse
Text: Dr Ruth Preusse