Posts Tagged ‘Elbe River’
Fragile
Tuesday, May 14th, 2019Fragile
Friday, March 31st, 2017
Stolpersteine for Emil Hochberg
Monday, February 27th, 2017Stolpersteine for Emil Hochberg
..February 2017.. ..Laubegast, Dresden..
Was walking along the Elbe retracing the long journeys that Victor Klemperer’s wife made from Dresden to Pirna because they wore the Jewish star and were not allowed to ride the tram or train.
The walk along the Elbe through Laubegast towards Pillnitz is my favorite. I can’t find the words to describe how the light and sound that comes off the river affect me.
I was walking with my head down and out of the corner of my eye caught the dull grey color of a Stolpersteine (stumbling stone) which I had never seen before. I have walked along the Kleinzschachwitz Ufer many times but never saw this Stolpersteine. A Stolpersteine is a small metal plate laid into the ground of the former residencies where Jewish families lived before they were deported. You have to be looking on the ground to find them because they blend into the ground.
This Stolpersteine was of a man name Emil Hochberg who was born in 1874, deported in 1943 and died in Auschwitz on August 28th, 1943. Most of the families living in Dresden had already been deported by 1943. When I researched I found that he had a non-Jewish wife, which might have spared the family a little bit more time since it was considered a mixed marriage. His wife survived the camps but there is no published information about her after the war.
There are around 20 Stolpersteine in Laubegast but this was the first I stumbled upon.
Dresden
Monday, February 13th, 2017..Dresden..
“In the middle of the night my mother came into the bedroom and shook me in a way like never before. Our suitcases were already packed and we frantically ran down to the cellar. A neighbor heard on the radio that a large formation of bombers was on its way. My mother was shaking because the air raid sirens sounded a full alarm. It was like having cold bucket of water poured down my body.” -Katarina Brünnel
The banks of the Elbe with Dresden in the background. On the night of February 13th, 1945 the baroque city of Dresden was pummeled by three waves of Allied firebombings.
The city burnt to ash for weeks. Dresden, once known as “Florence on the Elbe”, sat as a pile of debris for many years and is still being rebuilt.
Elbe
Thursday, March 8th, 2012..March 2012.. ..Dresden..
I walked to Pillnitz…..it`s always been one of the most beautiful walks I`ve ever taken. I can`t find the name of the color that sprints down the Elbe or the hazy dull palette above. The banks are lined with homes capped by ominious minorettes that I only have seen in dreams about another time.
It’s hard to believe this was place I wouldn’t have been able to walk a short time ago.
I can`t find the technicolor image or the precise words to express this feeling of walking along the Elbe. I feel creatively impotent when it comes to photographing my emotions. Which is frustrating because my photography is fueled by photographing emotion in other people.
What is this feeling? It isn`t the type of inspiration that I has moved me in the past. It isn`t inspiration or emotion that moves me 99.9% of the time. This is a walk dreamt in Technicolor with air that has a snap of a reality that I never thought existed.
East of the Elbe, half a world away from the Sumida
Sunday, March 6th, 2011..December 2009 East of the Elbe, Dresden..
Kurt Vonnegut and Dresden
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Apollo Radio Interview (Chemnitz, Germany)
Saturday, June 12th, 2010
..June 2010.. ..New York to Chemnitz..
Radio interview by Maria Kotzur of Apollo Radio about the upcoming portrait project in Dresden, Germany on survivors of the Dresden firebombings February 13th, 1945. Broadcast June 2010.
Interview options in English and dubbed in German. Press the play arrow to listen. The interview starts at about 25 seconds into the broadcast.
English
German
