Eden
Introduction
In a diary entry dated September 14, 1941, Adam Czerniakow, chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council, wrote:
" ...In Otwock. The air, the woods, breathing."
It’s a sparse entry, a single moment, but one full of life and meaning nevertheless. And it’s in stark contrast to the unremitting catastrophe which pervaded the life of the Jews at the time. Czerniakow had not had a day’s rest since the start of the war, and in these few words we sense his relief at having some time to himself. He doesn’t need to elucidate or explain what he’s thinking; ‘the air, the woods, breathing,’ says it all, about what it is to be alive and free - even for just a few hours. It also tells us by contrast, what it means to be a prisoner.
For most of the time, the only freedom Czerniakow could find was in the books he read at night. One of those books was ‘Pilgrim of the Forest’ by ‘Grey Owl’, and of that book, on January 19, 1940 Czerniakow wrote:
“…During the night I read a novel, 'The Pilgrim of the Forest' - Grey Owl - Szara Sowa. The forest, little wild animals - a veritable Eden.” In a previous entry, dated December 26, 1939, he wrote of how when reading “… [I am] constantly envying all the heroes of my novels because they lived in different times..." and in many ways, he seems to envy Grey Owl and the animals of the forest for the freedom they enjoy, one which he only discovers for a moment in Otwock.
Having bought a 1935 edition of the book, I wanted to find a way of working with the it (both in terms of its physical being and its text) to create a work or series of works exploring the Holocaust. This project records the progression of this work.