Unsaid
An Installation by Arnold Dreyblatt in Our Collection
The installation Unsaid was exhibited in our permanent exhibition from November 2008 to December 2017 and belongs now to the Jewish Museum Berlinʼs collection.
The installation features excerpts from letters, diaries, and reports written just before deportation or in the concentration camps and ghettos as well as notices from the Nazi authorities that organized the genocide.
What both text types have in common is that they conceal their true content: The official texts are silent about the murderous nature of their instructions. Likewise, the victim’s letters and postcards, subject to censorship and therefore self-censored, conceal the threat of death they were facing. The texts appear and disappear on a glass wall, as if typed.
Wherever possible, we have used documents from our archive that were composed between 1939 and 1945. They were supplemented with texts from other archives.
The Installation in the Exhibition Rooms in 2008
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Arnold Dreyblatt in front of his installation Unsaid on opening day; Berlin, 9 November 2008; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Sönke Tollkühn
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The installation Unsaid consists of a glass wall which in the exhibition cut through the room and drawed attention from afar. It is made of eight individual glass panes which are three meters high and one meter wide each; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe
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The translucent glass elements of Unsaid alternate between being transparent and opaque. When the glass pane is transparent, excerpts from documents are projected onto it. These are supplemented by more details like sender, recipient, date and subject line. The letters appear in quick succession as if typed on a typewriter; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Linus Lintner
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The sequence of the projected texts in German and English is random. This way the text fragments of the installation Unsaid left different impressions on the visitors – depending on how long they stayed, which texts they read, their own associations and prior knowledge; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe
Arnold Dreyblatt in front of his installation Unsaid on opening day; Berlin, 9 November 2008; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Sönke Tollkühn
The installation Unsaid consists of a glass wall which in the exhibition cut through the room and drawed attention from afar. It is made of eight individual glass panes which are three meters high and one meter wide each; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe
The translucent glass elements of Unsaid alternate between being transparent and opaque. When the glass pane is transparent, excerpts from documents are projected onto it. These are supplemented by more details like sender, recipient, date and subject line. The letters appear in quick succession as if typed on a typewriter; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Linus Lintner
The sequence of the projected texts in German and English is random. This way the text fragments of the installation Unsaid left different impressions on the visitors – depending on how long they stayed, which texts they read, their own associations and prior knowledge; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe
