Memory box

In July 1995 Yosefa Loshitzky and Haim Bresheeth (žabner) went on a honeymoon trip to Europe. What may have looked like a traditional destination choice for a newly married couple was in fact nothing of the sort for Haim and Yosefa, two Israeli dissidents living in London. Among their more predictable choices of conventionally attractive places such as the French countryside, the Swiss Alps and the like, their trip also included visits to the Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, as well as to the birthplaces of their Polish Jewish families who were exterminated by the Nazis: Sokolow Podlaski in North-Eastern Poland, where Yosefa’s family came from and Ostrowiec świętokrzyski in Galicia, where Haim’s parents came from. Tracing the origin of their lost families and visiting some of the places where their parents stayed during and after World War II, prior to their migration to British Mandate Palestine (which later became Israel), has turned for Haim and Yosefa into a roots journey to the void left by the destruction of European Jewry. When they returned from their European tour to their home in London they jointly designed and constructed a memory box where each compartment visually and symbolically represents a place of memory (Lieu de memoire) from their trip.