“Memories have colors…or rather memories are IN color.

I can close my eyes and remember my first 2-wheeler bicycle. It was royal blue; with a black seat; and a red reflector light that was on the silver carrier in the back. I can remember the colorful clown light switch that was in my old bedroom at home. The control was a big red nose that moved up and down.

But all of my memories of the Holocaust are in black and white.

And I hadn’t thought about why that is until today. Of course the answer is pretty obvious-its because-despite all of the knowledge that I have about the Holocaust-I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it with my own eyes.

The Holocaust that I have seen is all in black and white. So thats the only way that I remember it.

But think about the little red coat in Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List.  That coat was more then color. It was texture and it was emotion.

I can be academic and detached when I look at black and white. But color makes it real. Color hits me right in the stomach. And color brings tears to my eyes.

Through their art, Julie and Veronique pointed out to me the special role of daughters and sons of Holocaust survivors, and the special way that those memories were transmitted to them in color.

They see these memories in a different way. Those of us, born after the Holocaust, to families that were not there, simply do not.

Survivors, daughters and sons of survivors and maybe some of us too, every once in a while, see the Martyred dead of the Holocaust in color. And as long was we do, they will stay vivid in our memories.”

So I want to thank Veronique and Julie for letting the victims of the Holocaust remain in color, through you and through your work, for a little while longer.

 

Welcoming speech by Elliot Dlin, Executive Director Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education & Tolerance  given on May 1, 2008 at the exhibition premier of Color of Memory.