Holocaust survivor Elisaveta, Roy’s grandmother, tries to tell the story of her youth in the small Slovakian village up to the terrible events in the concentration camp in front of a camera.
In the first part of the trilogy ‘And we worked …’, family members visit Elisaveta to interview her in front of the camera. Staff from the Yad Vashem memorial then appear for a professional video interview and in the final part, two young Israeli soldiers are tasked with presenting Elisaveta with a hero medal.
In their encounter with the eyewitness Elisaveta, the protagonists in Markovich’s documentary become entangled in increasingly absurd situations. In the end, the old woman’s life story remains unheard. Towards the end, Elisaveta appears as a steadfast heroine, while all around her there is an overwhelmed and self-absorbed hullabaloo.
‘And we worked …’ deals with human behaviour in the face of a topic that cannot actually be dealt with. Everyday life is equally demanding for everyone, life goes on, and yet the Holocaust is and remains a monstrous trauma that constantly challenges Israeli society, the Jewish world and the global community and calls for adequate remembrance in the future. Despite everything, ‘And we worked …’ is above all a lovingly humorous video that reveals human inadequacy, stirs and moves.
The installation ‘And we worked …’, in the message salon booth at the Kunst13 art fair, was awarded the sponsorship prize by the external jury of the art fair Kunst13.
Roy Menachem Markovich, born 1979 in Tel Aviv, lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel