Erasure | 2012

This memorial plaque was commissioned by the Haagse Orde van Advocaten, (The Hague’s Order of Lawyers) the Hague, the Netherlands, to commemorate the deportation and murder of Jewish lawyers from the Hague during World War II. Installed in the entrance hall of the Palace of Justice in the Hague, NL, the work is open to the public.

The work was made first as a drawing – a stencil with the names of the lawyers and their date of birth and place of death was placed over a large sheet of paper which had been covered in graphite. Very gradually, moving from bottom to top, their names were erased, moving from dark to light. The drawing was then scanned and printed as a photograph and mounted on dibond.

The memorial was unveiled at the Palace of Justice on the 11th of December, 2012, with speeches made by lawyers Wybe Taekema of the Haagse Orde van Advocaten and Ernst A. van Win, and by Judith Belinfante, former director of the Joods Historisch Museum (Jewish Historical Museum) in Amsterdam, whose uncle was one of the lawyers commemorated.