Voices of the Next Generations

Elias Mendel uses excerpts from a letter in his family archive to create a charcoal stop-motion animation, drawing over the reprinted letter.

Elias’s great grandfather Bruno Schwarz was arrested on „Kristallnacht“ (November pogroms) 1938 and taken to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. The letter this animation is quoting details his decision to try to emigrate to South Africa with his wife Irma, and his daughter Rose. He was lucky to be released two weeks later, many others in Elias’s family were not so lucky.

Elias Mendel is a London-born artist, filmmaker, educator and German Jewish descendant, who is deeply interested in memorial culture, identity and community.

Find more about Elias Mendel’s art work here.