Ruins no more...

Top, the site razed, as seen yesterday, and bottom, the site with the five consecutive bays, as seen on our last visit.

Yesterday we visited Rosh HaAyin again. We had several meetings with people involved in preservation/planning/building in the City Council (on the committee for planning and building in the city) and independently, a historian passionate about the preservation of the old buildings and culture in Rosh HaAyin. After these meetings we went to measure the British Buildings, not having found any blueprints or plans etc. of any of this type of British army hangars. We decided to go to the British ruins which until recently functioned as a factory where blind people used to come to work. We came to the site and what a shock! Lo and behold the building, the ruins, was no longer in existence. The site was razed. However, the leaning British watchtower on site was left untouched.
The ruins as we had previously documented it, was a factory for the blind, whereby it seemed it has been completely abandoned, leaving piles of shoe soles all over (assumedly what the factory produced) and folders, papers, files belonging to the blind association. There had been a fire there, it is unclear whether the fire occurred after the building had been abandoned or if this was the reason for it being abandoned. Below, are some images of the Blind Factory British ruins before it was destroyed completely.

Samuel Bak - Holocaust Art - An Art of Ruins

Samuel Bak was born in Vilna, in 1933. At age 8 the Germans occupied the city and he moved with his family to the Vilna Ghetto. From there they were transported to the labour camps, from which he was smuggled and hid until the end of the war in a monastery. At the end of the war, only he and his mother were left alive out of an extensive family. In 1946, a year after the end of the war, young Samuel Bak refused to celebrate his barmitzva, as it seemed that he questioned his faith in God with a confusion that stays with him until today. Aged 15, he came to Israel to start anew, and began to take his artistic talent more seriously, and went to study in the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. In 1956 he left and went to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, after which he painted and travelled, exhibiting his works around the world. Today, aged 76, he resides in America. Bak's childhood in Vilna, his experiences in the Holocaust, his survival, his aliya and the rest of his life spent as a wandering Jew, alone and yet a part of the collective memory of the Jewish People, all had significant influence on him and the art he created in the last 60 years.

This art reflects the Holocaust as Ruins. In his art we see ruins, fallen houses, barren stone, damaged metal, discarded wood, reconstructed debris and various other marks of trauma are found on all objects, specifically those of human making. The ruins, reflect the trauma, the broken world of his childhood and that of the Holocaust.