Haunted Memories - Exhibition

Haunted Memories / Eyes on the Future, Macedonia TV Interview

On 10th March 2016 Artist Maty Grunberg opened an important exhibition in Holocaust Museum in Skopje, Macedonia, where he was born exactly 73 years before. Only recently M. Grunberg found that he is the last Jewish baby born at that time to have survived the Macedonian Jews Holocaust.

(The  Interview is in English)

I never knew when a haunted memory will catch up with me….

PictureHAUNTED MEMORY Small sculptural installation, 2002 Tree branches, card masks, pages from an old torn discarded prayer books
My story began a long time ago. At the end of February 1943 my grandmother, Signora Donna Kamhi, a midwife, said to her daughter, my mother, Bella Grünberg “Come, daughter, let us move to the village. The air is better there, and the food is healthier. You will have a good birth there.” And so, the young couple, Bella and her husband, my father, Leo Grünberg, set off from Skopje and settled in one of the nearby villages. I was born on March 4th 1943.  A few days later my father went to Skopje to bring a Mohel (Jewish circumciser). Seeing him, the townsfolk yelled “Run for your life! They have taken all the Jews!” He ran back to the village.

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THE INVESTIGATION OF THE JEWISH BOY

In this painting the figures of the two German officers are sitting, above them a giant insect, an ant queen, holding a German Cross decoration for valor, the Jewish child is at front of the painting but is really at the background, he has typical Jewish characteristic: a hat, sidecurls and three yellow Stars of David, each yellow star represents a year of my life as a toddler in the hide away.
This is my first memory…
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THE INVESTIGATION OF THE JEWISH BOY Painting, oil on canvas, 1966-69

THE CHIMNEY  - A set of eight etchings, with and applied gouache, handmade paper, 1969, unique

One day I was travelling in a train heading Sheffield in England passing through an industrial zone. The smoking chimneys triggered the memory of the Macedonian Holocaust. I wrote a lament and expressed myself in the work "THE CHIMNEY".
The dark smoke cloud id getting denser and denser with Hebrew letters floating away…