Julie Meetal - Artist Statement

The eleven paintings in the series Out of Ashes tell the story of my mother and father’s experiences in the Holocaust. They represent not only their experiences but embodies the many untold stories of all those who were lost. In creating this work, I feel that I have become their voice. As a daughter of survivors, I realized that I have a mission to remember what had happened, to educate others, to correct those who would deny the Holocaust, and to warn of the threat of genocide in the present.

The process of creating the paintings constituted a journey that has been spiritual and emotional and most of all healing. The work has been difficult, surprising, and largely intuitive, with many of the paintings emerging unplanned.

The Memorial Wall, part of the Out of Ashes series, began in 2003. I had been asked to travel to Treblinka, the Polish death camp, to design a memorial using fifty head stones that were found in the area. The Nazis destroyed Jewish cemeteries and ordered that the stones be used for paving roads. They hoped to not only annihilate Jews, but to further erase the history of Jewish life in Europe.

My family’s background has made me more sensitive to the culture and community that was destroyed in Europe, and after visiting Poland that was even more apparent. I want to remind the world of what was taken from us and warn younger generations that today's intolerance, fanaticism and hatred can destroy their world as they once destroyed so many. A powerful alert systems must be built not only because we know from bitter experience that the human beings are capable of the worst, as well as the best–of madness as well as genius–and that the unthinkable remains possible.