Art exhibition shines light on Romani persecution during Holocaust

[0:00] It is a lesser-known chapter of the Holocaust, [0:03] the murder of some 500,000 Roma and Sinti people, [0:06] members of a long marginalized and often persecuted [0:09] minority in Europe. [0:11] One way into that history is through the work of an artist [0:14] who survived it herself. [0:16] Jeffrey Brown reports now for our Art in Action series, [0:19] which explores the intersection of art and democracy [0:22] as part of our Canvas coverage. [0:24] Auschwitz, 1944, ravens and smoke in a dark sky. [0:30] A tattooed forearm floating in space, [0:32] the letter Z for the German word for gypsy, [0:35] used as a derogatory term. [0:37] The works and actual serial number of Chaya Stoica, [0:41] who survived the camps as a young girl [0:44] and many decades later in her 50s turned to art [0:47] as a way to remember the horror, [0:50] honor her fellow Romani people, [0:52] and warn the world of continuing threats [0:54] of right-wing nationalism. [0:56] Stoica died in 2013 at age 79, [1:00] a writer, artist and activist, [1:02] who, says Rutgers professor Ethel Brooks, [1:05] herself of Romani heritage [1:07] and chair of the European Roma Rights Center, [1:10] became a hero to many in her community and beyond. [1:13] She was there to say, no, we are, [1:16] we have this history and we have each other. [1:21] We have beauty and we have art [1:26] and we have stories that should be shared [1:28] with each other and with the world. [1:31] It's just, it's everything. [1:33] JEFFREY BROWN [1:33] Chaya Stoica, making visible at the drawing center, [1:38] a museum in New York, [1:40] is the first major U.S. exhibition on the artist, [1:43] with more than 60 paintings and drawings [1:45] made between 1992 and 2011. [1:48] Not documentary in style, [1:50] but acts of memory and imagination, [1:53] based on her own experiences and stories she was told. [1:57] Stoica was self-taught, [1:58] often working at her kitchen table in Vienna. [2:01] But, says exhibition curator Lynn Cook, [2:04] she developed a sophisticated style [2:06] of contemporary art making. [2:08] She restlessly experimented with processes [2:11] and materials and invented new vocabularies [2:16] to get at the same set of questions over and over again. [2:20] And that's very rare, in my experience, [2:22] for someone who hasn't had formal academic training. [2:26] But she had an aptitude for it, certainly. [2:29] And she had an inquiring mind, [2:33] a great deal of visual sophistication, [2:36] and a real purpose. [2:42] That purpose, to tell the stories of her people [2:45] and advocate on their behalf. [2:47] Documentary films by Karen Berger, [2:49] showing at the exhibition, [2:51] capture Stoica's personality, [2:53] and drive to bring Romani history and culture, [2:55] including music, to a larger public. [2:58] She did it first through writing, [3:07] including a 1988 memoir, We Live in Secrecy. [3:11] Next, through art, some of it recalling a pre-war life, [3:15] as in this untitled painting from 1995. [3:18] This idea of a Romani encampment [3:21] and of making home wherever you are in the world [3:25] is something that is really central to who we are and what we do. [3:28] Because so often, home has been denied to Romani people [3:33] because of the ways in which we've been treated [3:36] by the majority society. [3:37] JEFFREY BROWN, And then, the end of that life, [3:40] when the Nazis rounded up Romani people [3:43] and brought them by trains to the concentration camps, [3:46] Dachau, where Stoica's father was first taken. [3:49] He, one of Stoica's brothers, [3:51] and nearly 200 members of her extended family were killed. [3:54] Stoica, her mother, and four of her siblings barely survived. [3:58] One of the most powerful paintings, I think, is an early one, [4:02] where she's mapped the central space [4:07] in the Ravensbrück forced labour camp for women. [4:10] And you see the barracks to the side [4:12] and this large zone where roll call of thousands of women [4:18] took place every day, several times a day sometimes, [4:21] where they were made to stand for hours in freezing cold weather. [4:26] And it's the way she's painted the ground [4:28] and the kind of liquidity and the kind of cold palette [4:34] that speak very effectively to our emotions. [4:38] JEFFREY BROWN, They devoured us, [4:39] she titled this 1995 watercolor, [4:42] referencing a Romani term for the Holocaust, the devouring. [4:46] She portrayed what she called the beautiful women of Auschwitz, [4:50] and later made abstract, blotch-like images with ink on paper, [4:54] including one titled The Destitution, The Suffering, I Feel It Still. [4:59] In fact, Stoica was also speaking very directly [5:02] to new developments she feared in the 1980s and beyond, [5:07] the election of Kurt Waldheim as president of Austria, [5:10] despite revelations of his Nazi past, [5:13] a rise in far-right nationalism, [5:17] including anti-Roma rhetoric in Austria and elsewhere in Europe. [5:21] Stoica painted works such as this, titled Victory to Our Fuhrer. [5:25] When we talk about Holocaust denial, there was never, there was a denial. [5:30] There were no Roma who were invited to testify at Nuremberg, for example, right? [5:35] There was no, no one was asking Romani people, [5:40] what was your experience in the war? [5:42] Because it was seen as something that wasn't important. [5:45] And that was becoming kind of a larger issue for Roma, [5:49] but also, you know, the kind of racism and nationalism [5:53] that was resurging in Europe was something that [5:55] she was watching very carefully and speaking out against. [5:58] Today, that resurgence continues, even grows in many places. [6:08] In the works of Chaya Stoica, says curator Lynn Cook, [6:12] viewers can experience the thrill of a discovery of an artist [6:15] they might never have previously encountered and also a warning [6:19] that what has happened could once again. [6:22] For many people, the Holocaust and the Second World War [6:24] are so distanced as to be a very little part of their sense of history. [6:29] And I think that Stoica's work can very eloquently speak [6:35] to audiences of many kinds, [6:37] including those who really don't know about that earlier history, [6:41] and through that history make us more vigilant and make us more aware. [6:46] Chaya Stoica herself put it more bluntly, [6:49] saying Auschwitz is only sleeping. [6:52] For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jeffrey Brown at the Drawing Center in New York. [7:10] Support journalism you trust. [7:12] Support PBS News. 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