Allo-Thanatography or Allo-Auto-Biography: A Few Thoughts on One Painting in Charlotte Salomon’s "Leben? oder Theater?", 1941–42

<p>On the edge of the Catholic cemetery at Portbou, Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan (b. 1930) was commissioned to create a memorial to Walter Benjamin on the fiftieth anniversary of his death in the town on September 26, 1940. Inaugurated on May 15, 1994, the monument is entitled <em>Passages</em>. A rusted steel pathway leads to a hooded entrance, which opens onto a precipitous staircase cut directly into the cliff. The staircase appears to open directly onto the sea crashing on the rocks below. The viewer is, however, protected from falling into the sea by a massive wall of glass placed at the mouth of the staircase through which the blue Mediterranean is visible but on which has been written, engraved into the glass, a phrase from Walter Benjamin himself:</p> <blockquote><p>It is more arduous to honor the memory of the nameless than that of the renowned. Historical construction is devoted to the memory of the nameless.</p></blockquote> <p>Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) is one of the nameless. During her brief lifetime, the only document that affirmed her status as artist was the typed transport list that took her from Drancy on October 7, 1943, to Auschwitz, where she was murdered on October 10 because she was a pregnant Jewish woman…</p>