Site-Specific Location

What is grief? Is collective grief different from personal grief? How do memorial artists make grief visible?

Site-specific memorial projects mark specific sites of significance. Site-specific memorials transform an abstract idea about memory into a concrete plan based on historic evidence in relation to time and place. The Locker of Memory project is steeped in research and evidence gathering.

Working closely with historians and scientists for five years, the Locker of Memory project was based on a specific goal, to recover and preserve the history and memory of the Jungfernhof concentration camp and search for the lost mass grave containing more than 800 bodies. Using non-invasive ground penetrating radar, a scientific breakthrough took place in July 2024. Scientists found historic evidence in the form of recovered stones marking the foundational structure for the barracks containing Nazi-style “bunkbeds” for imprisoned Jews. The barracks were built by Jews for Jews in the spring 1942 following the Dünamünde Action, when 1800 prisoners were shot on a single day into mass graves in the Bikernieki Forest. Made from crudely constructed wooden planks, prisoners who were confined to these overcrowded sleeping arrangements were exposed to typhoid, dysentery, lice, and other contagious diseases. Sleeping in damp and corrosive environments, the barracks lacked privacy, heat, interior toilets, and washing facilities. Armed guards patrolled these spaces creating a mood of terror and intimidation. While darkness provided some protection, each night became a personal fight for survival.

The barracks contained rows of low, three-story rudimentary bunkbeds for sleeping and nighttime imprisonment. The physical presence of these beds constructed by Jewish prisoners at the camp for Jewish slave laborers at the camp, became a form of evidence that Jews inhabited this land. In this light, the historic “bunkbed” serves as an anchor, literally and figuratively, for a large-scale memorial project. The story-telling nature of the bunkbed as a place of confinement and sleep deprivation personifies the perpetual nature of deception that was present at every phase of Jungfernhof’s history. The site was initially characterized as a place of “resettlement.” German and Austrian Jews were forced to embark on four transports originally destined for the Riga ghetto, then diverted to the Jungernhof concentration camp, where they were coerced to relinquish all identification papers and property. In the spring of 1942, the camp was reconfigured into an “agricultural farm” for slave laborers. Prisoners report they were forced to plant a field of potatoes designed to conceal the mass grave containing more than 800 bodies. The camp closed in 1944, was occupied by the Soviet Union until 1990, when Latvia regained its independence. In 2017, the land belonging to the camp was repurposed by Latvian authorities as a recreation park for leisure and relaxation. The language of murder and reference to the lost mass grave was omitted from the park’s placard addressing the history of the site. In 2019, as a descendant of murdered victims, I broke the silence surrounding the camp. I created the Locker of Memory memorial project committed to representing the full story of this camp’s history, moving from murder to obliteration.

Memorials are keepers of history. A memorial at Jungfernhof will address the jarring memory of murder and the presence of a lost mass grave that continues to haunt the land. 3985 German and Austrian Jews were deported to Jungfernhof and murdered at the camp or in nearby forests that was never regarded as home. The fundamental estrangement to this history by the three perpetrating nations continues to undermine efforts for creating a permanent memorial at the camp. How will these groups acknowledge the history of the Jungfernhof camp and support funding for a permanent memorial?

Today, I am working closely with Latvia’s Jewish community to ensure that a permanent memorial will be installed at the bunkbed site, to properly address the history of this camp. I have been commissioned to create the concept and design for a memorial project. Situated within the foundational framework of the barracks and surrounded by transparent panels containing the names of 3836 murdered victims, the memorial will embody a larger statement about the site as a place of truth and justice.

Memorials are not designed to provide closure. Achieving the appearance of a resolution about the devastating history of this camp, produces a static outcome akin to forgetting. The goal is not to forget. We must ask, how will a memorial dealing with human remains at the site disrupt the tranquility of a recreational park?  How can these two concepts co-exist?

Contemporary memorials address lingering questions about moral responsibility. There is no expiration date on unaddressed issues of responsibility following genocide. Discomfort does not dissipate with time. The recovered stones of the barracks provide critical evidence that the Jungfernhof concentration camp with its history of murder existed on this land.

A memorial at the Jungfernhof concentration camp site also prompts new questions about community involvement and civic engagement. Memorials become gathering places, stimulating vibrant conversations about genocide, forgotten histories, and the purposeful role of remembrance as an active agent of memory. Memorials invite audiences to extract the lessons of history while striving to create a new world order based on the ideals of tolerance, compassion, and inclusion.  

Concurrently, an internationally acclaimed team of geospatial scientists, led by Prof. Philip Reeder, Geographer and Cartographer at the Center for Environmental Research & Education (CERE); and former Dean (07/13-06/21) Bayer School of Nat. & Envir. Sciences. Now: School of Science and Engineering, Duquesne University; and Prof. Harry Jol, Geographer and Anthropologist and Ground Penetrating Radar Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire will lead an ongoing search to recover all the stones pertaining to the barracks. I am also working in partnership with Ilya Lensky, Director of the Museum Jews in Latvia and leading member of the Jewish Community in Latvia to establish a memorial at the site. Collaborations with Latvian architects and fabrication artists will begin in the fall, 2025.