Buchpräsentation mit Mandy Gehrt: You are looking at one – Kartographie einer Erinnerung

Starting from an overlooked memorial site in Markkleeberg in the district of Leipzig, artist Mandy Gehrt followed in the footsteps of Holocaust survivor Dr. Zahava Szász Stessel to the present day in the United States. As 13- and 14-year-old Hungarian-Jewish girls, she and her sister survived Auschwitz and the Buchenwald subcamp in Markkleeberg. After liberation, their paths led them via Hungary, Germany, Cyprus and Israel to New York.
Mandy Gehrt photographed memorial sites, buildings, landscapes and other traces of the past while traveling to the stations of this post-war history. The images were supplemented by conversations with Zahava Szász Stessel, memories from her book 'Snow Flowers', encounters with relatives, experts and chance companions as well as research in archives and literature. The result is a cartography of memory that does not see it as closed, but as a movement.

The publication tells of flight, new beginnings, educational paths and self-assertion - and of the question of how survivors continued to live, learn, study, work, write and assert their history against oblivion after 1945.
The photo book You are looking at one - Kartographie einer Erinnerung will be published by Hentrich & Hentrich in June and will be presented hot off the press at the GfZK.

The event will take place as part of the 17th Jewish Week in Leipzig - Tacheles 2026.