us-005578-irn37868-irn42646
record resource extent: overall: Height: 27.000 inches (68.58 cm) | Width: 20.375 inches (51.753 cm) | Depth: 3.500 inches (8.89 cm)
has beginning date: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/dates/2002-01-01
history: Daisy Schweiger was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, on September 24, 1929, to Aranka, born in 1905, and Ludwig Schweiger, born 1896. She had an older sister, Mary, born on November 3, 1936. Ludwig was a bank director. Her mother had attended finishing school in Vienna where she studied English, and thus she gave her children English first names. The family was comfortably upper-middle class and assimilated into local culture. They spoke German and Hungarian at home. In September 1939, the western powers signed the Munich Pact agreeing to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in exchange for a pledge of peace from Hitler. Not long after this, with the support of Nazi Germany, Hungary and Poland annexed adjacent regions as well. The bank where Ludwig worked transferred him to a small branch in Chust (Huszt, Ukraine), a region annexed by Hungary. The Schweigers became Hungarian citizens. Anti-Jewish laws were introduced gradually, but by 1942, Jews were stripped of their rights and forced out of many professions. Ludwig lost his job at the bank, and many of the family’s possessions were sold to support the family. In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary. All Jews were interned in ghettos and soon the Germans began systematic deportations of the Jewish population to concentration camps. In May, Daisy and her family were taken from the Jewish ghetto to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, arriving on June 7. Her father was immediately sent to the gas chamber. Daisy, her mother, Aranka, and her sister, Mary, were transferred to Birkenau. After three weeks, they were among a group of women selected by Josef Mengele for forced labor in a different camp. That night, they were locked in a concrete building just outside the barbed wire fence, not far from the railway tracks. There were no windows in the room, just a few small glass panels near the ceiling. The women were crammed in, standing room only. The next morning when they were on their way to the …
has end date: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/dates/2002-12-31
identifier: irn42646
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
is or was included in: us-005578-irn37868
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn37868-irn42646/acquisitions/1
has or had some members with language: eng
type: RecordSet
scope and content: Ceramic wall sculpture of an iron barred prison created by Daisy Brand to evoke her ordeal of being imprisoned in multiple concentration camps from 1944-1945. Daisy's art became infused with her Holocaust experience in the 1980s. Her references are suggestive and deliberately ambiguous and she keeps the exact meaning of the symbolism in her work private, thus more evocative and universal. Daisy and her family lived in Chust, Hungary, when it was occupied by the Germans in March 1944. By May, Daisy and her family were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Her father went directly to the gas chamber. Daisy, aged 15, her sister, Mary, aged 19, and her mother, Aranka, aged 39, were selected as forced labor for Kaiserwald concentration camp. In July 1944, the camp was evacuated as Soviet and American forces approached. Aranka disappeared during the forced march. Daisy and Mary were transferred to multiple concentration camps: Dondagen II, Libau, Stutthof, and Buchenwald. On April 17, Buchenwald was evacuated; camp inmates began a forced march to Dachau. They were freed by American forces near Wurzen, Germany, on April 24, 1945. In mid-May, Daisy and her sister were repatriated to their native city, Bratislava, in Czechoslovakia. With the help of the Red Cross, they found an aunt and uncle who took in the girls. This couple, and one other aunt, were their only relatives to survive the Holocaust.
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn37868-irn42646/alternateIDs/1
has record set type: Item
date: 1944 May-1945 April
has or had holder: us-005578
conditions of use: Restrictions on use
physical characterisitics and technical requirements: Mixed media sculpture constructed of 2 ceramic pieces with painted images attached to a wood backing. The overall image features a view of an industrial building with cracked gray stones surrounding a small, spiked, iron gate. The black ceramic background is coated with white porcelain crazing. There is a diamond patterned ceramic tube at the top. Beneath the tube, set onto the porcelain, is a thick strip of black ceramic. It extends from the bottom right corner of the sculpture and continues up and over the gate to the opposite side where it curls into a spiral. At the bottom is a black arch surrounding the spiked gate. In front of the gate is a black pole that threads through the holes in the side of the arch. Inside the arch is a gate of 3 spiked poles attached by 6 ceramic cuffs. Behind the gate is an orange painted background. The artist's signature is incised at the bottom right corner.
history: The sculpture was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2009 by Daisy Brand.
title: Mixed media wall sculpture by Daisy Brand depicting an iron barred concentration camp prison