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“Pitchipoï” – a made-up word, imagined by Jewish prisoners at the French internment camp Drancy during the Nazi period to give a name to the unknown place that awaited them after deportation, and the name of an installation by Leon Kahane: “To me, the word ‘Pitchipoï’ is much stronger than the word ‘Auschwitz.’”

In the area of the historical permanent exhibition at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, which is dedicated to grappling with National Socialism after 1945, visitors see an ink drawing. It was made by the artist’s grandmother, who was also interned at the Drancy transit camp. What does grappling with the Nazi past mean to the artist in relation to his own family history? “I’m aware of how closely linked I am to German history, with the history of anti-Semitism. It’s an ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, I wonder why I have to do this. At the same time, I feel a sense of responsibility. [...] It makes me angry, sad, and in a way proud as well, because it’s the only thing that remains.”

This two-channel video work centers on the Cité de la Muette complex, which was built as a social housing project in the 1930s. The building is distinguished by its modernist construction. Originally built to serve the common good, it was repurposed by the Vichy and Nazi regime to serve as a transit camp between 1940 and 1944. The screen on the right shows images of the architecture and residents of present-day Drancy. Especially in the context of exhibition at the Nazi Documentation Centre, which is built atop the ruins of the former “Brown House,” the Nazi party headquarters, there is an urgent need to reflect on architecture that is shadowed by the past. The artist sums up: “The appropriation of modern considerations that were supposed to help society and the misuse of anti-modern, inhuman ideologies is a classic. [...] The normalcy that has taken hold there today is the most awful thing, but at the same time, it’s what we want.”

In the video at left, Lucien Tinader, a volunteer who works to preserve the memory of the site’s conflict-ridden past, takes viewers on a tour of the area. The footage is overlaid with explanations by the contemporary witness, shown in yellow script. They serve as a reminder that the voices offering direct access to history will fall silent not long from now. Tinader was instrumental in establishing a memorial at the site, which Kahane photographed. “The first panel shows Jewish fighters in World War I, but also Senegalese battalions from the former colonies. It all comes together at this camp. That’s why I view it as seemingly the epitome of these problems. There’s hardly a single conflict that interests me politically these days that isn’t reflected there.”

In light of the recent re-emergence of forms of racism once thought to have been banished, Kahane’s installation also asks a number of questions. What images and stories are represented by cultures of remembrance? How can we express ambivalence? Where do different stories and histories fit into collective memory? At the juncture of temporality and contemporaneity, Pitchipoï offers an approachable space for remembrance, expressing the contradictions and continuity inherent in different views of history.

By Mareike Schwarz, a student of art history at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich