Project by St. Marion van Tilzer
Starting 2024 and year of execution 2028

Contemporary art installation in combination with a music composition & soundscape

Vilma Grunwald (1904-44) and her husband Kurt, lived in Prague. They had two sons, Jenda (1928-44) and Misa, (alias Frank,1932-2023). On July 13, 1942, the Grunwald family was first sent to Theresienstadt and later, at the end of 1943, to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Kurt worked there as a doctor in a medical camp. Their oldest son, Jenda, walked with a limp and was sent to the gas chambers. Vilma decided to accompany him.
Just before they were sent into the gas chambers, Vilma wrote a letter to her husband, which she handed to an older German guard. Kurt received the letter the next day. He and his son Frank survived the Holocaust and moved together to the United States. Frank found Vilma’s letter among Kurt’s belongings after his father’s death in 1967. The letter is currently on display in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.