Chabad Islington hosts work by artist exploring family’s Shoah fate

During lockdown, artist Rafael Klein found himself wanting to discover more about what happened to the family his grandmother left behind in Poland or the relatives his father once had in Austria.

As he reflects: “In my family, nobody ever talked about the old country. My grandmother left Poland at the turn of the 20th century. She never spoke about what happened to the family she left behind. I knew my father’s family came from Austria. But when I asked him, he said: ‘I don’t know what city’ – they didn’t talk about that.”

He set himself the task of learning what it was like when Jews hid in forests, in attics, in holes in the ground – and the result was A Wanderer, a hand-printed, limited edition artists’ book.

Now, Klein presents this tactile work together with large-scale interactive panels that open to reveal Jews in hiding at a new exhibition hosted by Chabad Islington Jewish Art Gallery in Upper Street.

Works by London-based Jewish artists David Hochhauser and Beverley-Jane Stewart are also on display.

For more details, visit jewishislington.co.uk