Reykjavík Grapevine - sep. 2021, Blaðsíða 11

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The Queen Is Back
Sep.24th, Háskólabíó, 4.990 ISK
Pop queen of Iceland GDRN is back
and holding court at Háskólabíó.
GDRN broke out in 2018 with her
monster hit “Hva! Ef” and has
since been collecting more or less
every Icelandic music award out
there while simultaneously nailing
her dramatic debut on the Netflix
show, Katla. She dropped her latest
album in February 2020, but COVID
prevented a proper release party.
So, feel free to go nuts. VG
South American Fusion
Andervel + Strings
Sep. 12th - 20:00 - Hús máls og
menningar - 1.500 ISK
Andervel is the music project of
singer-songwriter, multi-
instrumentalist and composer José
Luis Anderson. Anderson currently
lives in Iceland but Andervel serves
as an homage to his familial roots in
Mexico, his classical singing
background, and his maturation in
the Icelandic arts scene. In his
latest production, Andervel is
accompanied by a string quartet
and pianist/organist Kristján
Hrannar. Plus, hip-hop hero JóiPé
and folk star Elín Hall will also
appear with him. VG
Bríet Makes A Splash
Bríet, Rubin Pollock and "orleifur
Gaukur with DJ Margeir
Sep.7th 20:00 - Sky Lagoon,
Kópavogur - 9,990 to 13,900 ISK
Have you ever longed for the
experience of exfoliating with rock
salt and fresh lime, while taking
in the smooth sounds of one of
Iceland’s brightest talents and
helping chronically ill children at
the same time? Well, long no longer.
Briet takes over the Sky Lagoon—
Kopavogur’s posh new uber
spa— to stage a benefit for the
charity Fjársjó!ur Barna. It’s unclear
whether punters will be luxuriating
in the geothermal waters or
shivering on dry land during the
concert. Please be careful with
that salt and lime combination on
the more sensitive areas of your
body, though. It could sting, we
hear, if not applied with caution. Not
that the Grapevine staff have any
personal experience of that. JP
Iceland’s Failure In The
Holocaust, Remembered
Erik DeLuca brin#s to li#ht Iceland’s denial of Jews
and in doin# so, tells the story of his people
Words: Hannah Jane Cohen Photos: Erik DeLuca
December 10th, 1938: The Ministry of Justice
receives a letter from 27-year-old Telmar and
Paula Toller and their four-week old son Den-
ny. Jews from Berlin, they plead for a residence
and work permit to Iceland. Telmar was an en-
gineer, electrician and baker. One month later,
the application was denied. Telmar, Paula and
Denny died at a later, unknown date at the
Auschwitz concentration camp.
August 19th, 1939: Leo Berger writes asking
for a one-year residence permit for him, his
wife Gertrud and their eight-year-old child,
Herbert. They had already been granted en-
try into the U.S., but had to find a place to
stay until he could emigrate, due to the many
people in line before them. Leo notes that he
does not intend to seek work in Iceland and
is ready to finance his stay. A Jew, he merely
wants to enter Iceland so he can survive. Blue
text written on the document by the Icelandic
government says one word: Deny. According
to the Czechoslovakian Holocaust database,
Leo, Gertrud, and Herbert were killed in the
Lodz Ghetto.
Edwin Brandes, 26, a dental technician,
denied, died January 29th, 1944 in Auschwitz.
Else Kurzbart and her brothers, denied, died
before 1945 in the Minsk Ghetto. Josef Gelles,
denied, died on May 30th, 1940 in Sachsenhau-
sen. Wilhelm Tichauer, denied, was killed in
Bechenwald. Hundreds more—all rejected by
Iceland in their time of need.
Their letters and documents—thousands
of them—had, until now, remained unseen,
hidden away in the National Archives. But they
have been brought to light by Erik DeLuca at
Kling og Bang’s new installation ‘Unheard Of’.
Ignoring the past
Erik is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor,
his grandma, who unfortunately died when
he was quite young. “I never really knew about
her journey and that’s something that I strug-
gle with,” he explains. After reading Hannah
Arendt’s work on the politics of forgetting, he
discovered a quote by Audre Lorde—“By ignor-
ing the past, we are encouraged to repeat its
mistakes.”—that inspired him to dive deeper
into the subject
“I’m an artist and I’ve been dealing with
the politics of forgetting related to my own
identity and having questions for my grand-
mother. I worked in Iceland from 2016 to 2018
at the art school and I became interested in
the relationship between Iceland and the Ho-
locaust,” he explains. “I knew there had to have
been Jews that were living in Iceland or came
to Iceland to find asylum and so I just went to
the National Archives and asked them if they
had any information about people fleeing the
Holocaust. Days later, they wheeled out this
cart full of these documents called the ‘Sur-
veillance of Foreigners.’”
Many might not know this, but the current
Directorate of Immigration was originally
founded as the Surveillance of Foreigners. It
was headed by Agnar Kofoed-Hansen, who ac-
tually went to Germany in 1939 at the personal
invitation of Heinrich Himmler for a course
in immigration organised by the SS. “This ar-
chive,” Erik continues, “This is documentation
of Iceland’s first immigration policy, which
was set up to keep Jews away.”
The archive is not just comptised of letters
from Jews or applications, it’s just filled with
every document even marginally related to
foreigners at the time—thousands of them
that range from the mundane to the horrify-
ing.
A 1939 invoice for 29.90 ISK from Björn
Bjarnason, who gathered information about
foreigners in Mosfellshreppur. A 1938 invoice
for 357.10 ISK from the Police Department for
the reimbursement of costs incurred in the
deportation of the Rottberger family, one of
whom was born in Iceland. This follows a 1937
letter sent by Atli Ólafsson, demanding the
deportation of the Jewish family due to the
success of Rottberger’s leather business.
And it goes on and on, but Erik carefully
combed through it all, documenting and wit-
nessing history.
“Dealing with these letters, it’s hard, dif-
ficult and intense. I didn’t feel good—sitting
and touching these stories, like physically
touching their handwriting,” he says. “But
you have to sit with it.”
The lucky ones
The exhibition begins with a video wall, which
flips through Erik’s photos of the archives,
accompanied by narration. Along with that,
there’s a big triangle, which was the logo of the
Ministry of Justice at the time—a representa-
tion of how much of this story was just the
menial process of bureaucracy. The exhibition
also features a poem by Melitta Urbanacic, one
of the few lucky Jews allowed to enter Iceland
due to her non-Jewish husband Victor taking a
job conducting the Iceland Symphony Orches-
tra—purely to save his wife.
“The poem is about assimilation and home
and trauma and also the guilt of being one of
the lucky ones,” he explains. Melitta’s great-
granddaughter, Kate, translated it to English
for the show.
Lime grass grows on the floor of the exhibi-
tion. “Lime grass sucks up nitrogen from the
air and brings it to the soil,” Erik explains. “It
rejuvenates damaged soil.”
Help as many as you can
The exhibition and Erik’s research makes one
thing abundantly clear: Iceland failed the Jews
during their time of need. They have blood on
their hands—though many Icelanders today
don’t even know it.
That said, Iceland has a rare moment of
redemption here as the debate regarding Af-
ghan refugees goes on. Here are people, once
again, looking death in the eyes and asking for
help—will Iceland give them it? Or will more
boxes be filled with papers marked “Deny”?
“You must help as many human beings as
you can,” Erik states. “We’re human beings. It’s
simple. If you have the means, help.”
Info: ‘Unheard Of’ will be at Kling & Bang until
October 3rd, 2021.
CULTURE
NEWS
The documents tell that harrowing tale
“This is
documentation
of Iceland’s first
immigration
policy, which was
set up to keep
Jews away.”