us-005578-irn47434-irn50264
type: RecordSet
archival history: The sculpture was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2012 by Peter Dallos.
biographical history: Peter Deutsch (later Dallos) was born on November 26, 1934, in Budapest, Hungary, to Erno and Maria Klein Deutsch. Erno was born in 1903 to an Orthodox Jewish family and had three younger brothers, Otto, Miklos, and Sanyi, and a sister Ella, born circa 1920. Marie, born in January 1906, had a younger brother Endre, born in 1917, and a sister Klari. The couple married in 1932. Erno was an accountant for Karitex and Marie was a comptroller for Andrea Cementworks. Miklos and Sanyi left Hungary in the 1930s; Miklos for France and Sanyi for Palestine. The Hungarian government had radical fascist elements and was closely allied with Germany. Antisemitic measures based upon the Nuremberg racial laws in Germany were passed in the 1930s. Jews lost their citizenship and were barred from many professions. By 1940, Erno was released from his job, but was employed as an accountant by several Jewish owned factories. Forced labor service was required of all able-bodied male Jews. Marie’s brother Endre was drafted as a soldier in 1940, but a new ordinance mandated that Jews could serve only as conscripted laborers, not soldiers. Hungary joined the Axis Alliance with Nazi Germany in November and participated in the military invasions of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1941. The labor brigades were placed under the command of the military and deployed on war-related construction work. In 1941, Erno and his brother Otto were mustered into a forced labor brigade. Erno was released after several months, but Otto was sent to Levocne in the Ukraine. In 1943, Erno was assigned to a forced labor camp, but again released after several months. The family received a Red Cross notice in February 1943 that Endre and his battalion had disappeared during the retreat from Russia following the battle of the Don. Peter’s paternal grandfather died of natural causes that year leaving Peter and his maternal grandfather as the only male relatives still in Budapest. There were frequent bombings and air…
physical characteristics and technical requirements: Wedge shaped, welded steel sculpture that is split nearly in two down the center.The wedge remains joined at the slightly pointed, narrow right end and rises upward and thickens at the opposite end. This center v-shaped chasm expands from a narrow slit to a wide open gap, but the 2 sections remain joined by a thin black painted base. The outer edges of the base are smooth; the interior edges of the gap are rough and pitted. The right or front wedge section is painted silver and polished, with an uneven surface created by raised, rippled veins of metal. The left or back section is painted black. The back edge rises into a narrow, vertical panel with a peaked triangular back section. It is nearly twice as tall as the base, with a hammered, smooth, uneven top surface, resembling a mountain top. In front of this panel is a narrow cliff like shelf with a smooth path that inclines upward to the back. Inserted into the shelf are 51 small, brass pegs, separated into three groups: a large group of 47 pegs flanked by two sets of 2 pegs. The base underside has the artist’s name and the years of creation scratched in the center and 3 felt supports.
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
date: 2000 December
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn50264
is or was included in: us-005578-irn47434
record resource extent: overall: Height: 8.000 inches (20.32 cm) | Width: 25.125 inches (63.818 cm) | Depth: 12.000 inches (30.48 cm)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Forced March No. 1. is a welded steel sculpture created by Peter Dallos in December 2000. It represents captives being marched along a narrow cliffside road overlooking a chasm, downward, into a hell. The uneven ridge on the other side of the chasm has a polished silver surface representing a better place they will never reach. It is one of nine works in The War Series, created from 1988-2012. Each work has small, thin brass rods carefully positioned in the forbidding sculptural environment that often represent Peter and his parents, as well as all those victimized by the war and the Holocaust. Hungary was a close German ally, and had enacted anti-Jewish laws since the 1930s. In 1940, Peter's father and uncles were deported to forced labor camps. But after the defeat at Stalingrad, Hungary sought a separate truce with the western Allies. To thwart these efforts, Germany occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, when Peter was ten years old. They immediately began to systematically deport all Jews to concentration camps. Peter's father Erno was deported to a labor camp in Serbia. Peter and his mother Marie had to wear Star of David badges and move into a Jews only building. In August, Marie acquired two protective passes issued by the Swedish Red Cross which exempted them from deportation. By October, the Jews in Budapest were the last remaining Jews in Hungary. On October 15, a German orchestrated coup brought the antisemitic, fascist Arrow Cross Party to power and deportations increased. In November, Peter and Marie moved into a Swedish protected house. In December, during the siege of Budapest, there was no electricity, gas, or water, and no glass in building windows. People feared starvation. The city was continuously bombed and they stayed in the standing room only cellar most of the time. In mid-January 1945, their section of the city, Pest, was liberated by the Soviet Army; Buda was freed on February 13. Peter's father did not return and they later learned that he h…
title: Forced March No 1., steel and brass allegorical sculpture symbolizing prisoners on a forced march into a chasm