{"id":94324,"date":"2025-10-21T08:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/94324\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T08:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:36:10","slug":"dublin-based-gallerist-reclaims-his-familys-holocaust-story-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/94324\/","title":{"rendered":"Dublin-based gallerist reclaims his family\u2019s Holocaust story \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The building work is nearing an end at the Melody Lofts, a three-storey redbrick factory that has gained two additional floors and is now flanked by two modern neighbouring buildings. Hoardings outside promise stylish new homes for people who value\u201d space, style and history\u201d. <\/p>\n

We are in the city of Lodz in central Poland, where, a century ago, this was the buzzing textile and stocking factory owned by the Rozenfeld family. <\/p>\n

They were one of countless Jewish families that helped make Lodz, 120km southwest of Warsaw, into Poland\u2019s third-largest city and an industrial powerhouse to rival Manchester.<\/p>\n

The Rozenfelds are long gone: those not murdered by the Nazis were scared away by anti-Jewish feeling in postwar Poland. Monika Rozenfeld was born here in 1939 and \u2013 thanks to her mother Kryszia\u2019s luck, bravery and ingenuity \u2013 survived the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto. Mother and daughter lost most of their family and started again in London.<\/p>\n

\"EdytaEdyta and Monika, Oliver’s grandmother and mother, in their hometown of Lodz in 1946. Photograph: Oliver Sears family collection <\/p>\n

In 1990, after the Iron Curtain fell, Monika travelled back to Lodz to see what was left of the family inheritance with her son Oliver. <\/p>\n

Some 35 years later Sears \u2013 now a Dublin-based gallerist \u2013 has returned with a new iteration of his exhibition, Objects of Love. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Oliver Sears: I had to tell my mother that her father had been tortured for 11 days and murderedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Three years ago in Dublin Castle, the exhibition broke visitor records by telling his family\u2019s tragedy and triumph through personal objects such as rings, a monogrammed powder compact and photos of people murdered by Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes it so painful is that there are no bodies and funerals,\u201d says Sears. \u201cBut when 35,000 people came to see it in Dublin, when I saw those people queuing up to see an exhibition of my family\u2019s story shuffling past photographs of my family, they were paying their respects to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

‘The Objects of Love’ exhibition at Dublin Castle in 2022 used family photos, objects and documents to tell the story of one Jewish family before, during and after the Second World War. Video: Bryan O’Brien <\/p>\n

Respect is on Sears\u2019s mind as we sit in Lodz, where his dogged research has seen other missing pieces of his family puzzle fall into place. Last January, during one of his occasional online genealogical searches, Sears came across the name of his maternal grandfather, Pawel Rozenfeld, listed on the website of the Radogoszcz memorial, a notorious former Gestapo prison on the outskirts of Lodz.<\/p>\n

\"ExhibitExhibit from the Objects of Love exhibition in Lodz, Poland. Photograph: Muzeum Tradycji Niepodleg\u0142o\u015bciowych <\/p>\n

Sears contacted the memorial museum, introduced himself and his family, and told them about his Dublin exhibition, co-created with his wife, Catherine Punch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin 48 hours they came back and said they would love to do it there,\u201d says Sears. A \u201creally happy dialogue\u201d followed over the subsequent six months and the Rozenfeld family history is now an outdoor exhibition here.<\/p>\n

Family heirlooms are on display in a glass case inside the adjacent former prison. It was here that Pawel Rozenfeld and two employees of his stocking factory were brought in 1939, weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland that triggered the second World War.<\/p>\n

\"ExhibitExhibit from the Objects of Love exhibition in Lodz, Poland. Photograph: Muzeum Tradycji Niepodleg\u0142o\u015bciowych \"ExhibitExhibit from the Objects of Love exhibition in Lodz, Poland. Photograph: Muzeum Tradycji Niepodleg\u0142o\u015bciowych <\/p>\n

In the subsequent six years, about 40,000 people passed through this detention centre \u2013 Jews, political prisoners and others \u2013 before its horrific end. In May 1945 the retreating Germans set fire to the prison. At least 1,000 prisoners died in the blaze and just 30 survived in a water tank.<\/p>\n

Pawel Rozenfeld was long dead at this stage, having been taken from the prison after 11 days and most likely shot in a local forest. Recent excavations of mass graves there give hope that Sears, who has provided DNA samples, may finally find his grandfather.<\/p>\n

For now the Lodz exhibition has filled in other small but humanising gaps in his family\u2019s history, such as their old telephone number discovered in a contemporary phone book. Although his elderly mother, Monika, was unable to attend the opening, Sears saw his task in Lodz as restoring the identity and dignity of a father she lost here as an infant. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want to honour him by bringing him alive here again,\u201d says Sears. <\/p>\n

\"PawelPawel Rozenfeld – Oliver Sears’s grandfather – was taken from prison after 11 days and most likely shot in a local forest. Photograph: Oliver Sears family collection <\/p>\n

Few walking around this city today realise just how much of its staggering industrial architecture the city owes to its missing Jewish citizens such as Pawel Rozenfeld or his father, Mozes, who founded the stocking factory that employed 140 people.<\/p>\n

Poland\u2019s pre-war Jewish population was about 3.2 million, about 10 per cent of the total, but in Lodz the Jewish population was closer to 40 per cent. <\/p>\n

Irish ambassador to Poland Patrick Haughey, in his opening address, recalled how the barbarity of the Holocaust had yielded to an international order once again under attack by a \u201cgrowth in populism, the temptation to curb human rights and restrict freedom of the media\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this exhibition will continue to reach new generations, to encourage them to understand the horrors of the past and heed the warnings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"OliverOliver Sear at the opening of his exhibition in Lodz. Photograph: Muzeum Tradycji Niepodleg\u0142o\u015bciowych <\/p>\n

Local curator Ludvika Majewska praised Sears for his labour of love in cherishing \u2013 and sharing \u2013 the remaining Rozenfeld family heirlooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove is still present in these objects from those heartbreaking times,\u201d she said. \u201cEven in times of brutality and loss, love is the feeling which allows us to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a dinner following the opening, members of Lodz\u2019s ageing Jewish community reflected on the many ghosts of the Rozenfelds and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cJewish life was pretty much buried here after the war and it\u2019s not possible now to rebuild,\u201d said local Jewish man Henryk Brand. <\/p>\n

\u201cYoung people can\u2019t have a Jewish life here any more, there is no infrastructure,\u201d adds Dorota Ciesieska, whose daughters now live in Israel and the UK.<\/p>\n

Other young Jewish families who stayed in Poland have moved to the nearby Polish capital. The morning after the exhibition opening in Warsaw, Poland\u2019s Brooklyn-born chief rabbi Michael Schudrich studies with interest the Objects of Love catalogue.<\/p>\n

For three decades, Schudrich\u2019s efforts to re-establish Jewish life in Poland have seen him straddle the fault lines of a country with two discrete, yet interlinked, Nazi-era tragedies: the murder of 2.5 million ethnic Poles and of 2.8 million Jews. Poland\u2019s previous national conservative government was particularly energetic in focusing on ethnic Poles\u2019 wartime suffering, bravery and martyrs \u2013 for which there are ample examples \u2013 as part of a nationalist narrative push.<\/p>\n

This approach was welcomed by some, correcting what they saw as too much focus on Jewish victims of the Nazis. Others in Poland were \u2013 and remain \u2013 concerned that the resulting museums, schoolbooks and legislation hinder educators and historians. Rabbi Schudrich says fears of a crackdown on critical historical research are overblown, but he understands concerns of a chilling effect \u2013 and its consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the biggest fears is that young scholars might think twice about going into Jewish history as a subject because they could get themselves into some kind of mess,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd who wants to have that headache?\u201d<\/p>\n

With the current liberal-left government of Donald Tusk, he says things are \u201cmore calm\u201d. But like many, Schudrich is watching with interest to see how Karol Narwocki, Poland\u2019s new nationalist-aligned historian-turned-president, will shape this emotional debate over competing strands of victimhood that go to the heart of modern Polish identity.<\/p>\n

Back in Lodz, Oliver Sears is in a reflective mood about his family and the luxury apartments being built in their former factory. Postwar Polish laws ruled out compensation for this commercial property, but Sears hopes the exhibition will aid his campaign for memorial plaques here. \u201cWe are looking for a monument that endures, remembering their memory and the injustice they suffered,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat we will not accept, is their erasure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The building work is nearing an end at the Melody Lofts, a three-storey redbrick factory that has gained…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[292,61,60,43,2850,45210],"class_list":{"0":"post-94324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-germany","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-poland","13":"tag-second-world-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}