In his moving installation AugenBlicke, artist Georg Soanca-Pollak remembers the children of Munich’s Jewish families who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. From November 7 to December 1, 2024, the names and portrait photos of children will be shown on the facade and in-side the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Social-ism, filling the space with all of their individuality, beauty, and innocence. This artistic project enables viewers to encounter these children as individuals in the here and now, and the artist wishes for us to get to know the people portrayed. The aim is to restore these children’s dignity and make their fates a part of collective remembrance.
The photographs are all taken from “identity cards” issued from 1938 to 1944. Starting in 1938, Jews of all ages were made to apply for such identity cards, which they had to present in all of their dealings with the authorities. A great number of administrative files relating to these identity card applications made by Munich’s Jewish residents has survived, and these are now held by the Stadtarchiv München. They contain 4,500 duplicate cards, most of them displaying a portrait photo of the applicant, which were documented in the two-volume work Biographisches Gedenkbuch der Münchner Juden 1933–1945 (Biographical Memorial Book of the Jews in Munich 1933–1945). Soanca-Pollak selected eighty child portraits from among these documents, enlarged them, and painstakingly incorporated them into the building’s architecture in his installation.
AugenBlicke provides an intimate approach to the horror of the Shoah. Georg Soanca-Pollak’s installation invites visitors learn the stories these portraits have to tell and remember the fates of these individual children and adolescents.
Georg Soanca-Pollak, born 1967 in Klausenburg (now Cluj-Napoca), Romania, lives and works in Munich. Since 1995 his work has focused on re-membrance of the victims of national socialism and on developing new forms of commemoration and remembering in his spatial installations. His most well-known work is his Gang der Erinnerung (Corridor of Memory) for the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria.