On Nov. 9, 1938, anti-Semites ran through the streets of German-held territory setting fire and laying waste to anything Jewish in a massive planned pogrom known as Kristallnacht, or The Night of Broken Glass.
Until last year, Susan Hensel, director of The Art Apartment, hadn’t been able to express this tragic event with her art. But now she’s ready, and The Art Apartment, 210 Abbott Road, Suite 18, is the location of her latest installment, “Kristallnacht: the bystanders.”
“I was concerned with those issues but not mature enough to deal with them until now,” she said.
The exhibit opened Nov. 11 after a year of preparation and will continue through early December. To see it, patrons must arrange a time with Hensel to visit the installment and all are welcome.
Cloth is draped on the walls of the apartment, and written on it are the names of thousands of concentration and extermination camps found in the German Reich.
Artifacts, from old newspapers to books, decorate the entrance. Everything in the room relates to the subject of Kristallnacht or the Holocaust.
Behind a partition are scissors hanging from wires and molds of human arms, among other things.
“My 10-year-old daughter was here and she went in and pulled the scissors to recreate the sound of breaking glass,” studio art graduate student Harry Williams said.
Hensel started creating the exhibit piece by piece in her home a year ago with Lansing Community College student Scott Wilson. Hensel has employed Wilson in the past, and he said he’s enjoying more and more input into the creative process.
“A lot of this installation was influenced in some part by me,” he said. “I handled most of the things, those are my hands that are cast.”
Williams said that as an art student, watching “Kristallnacht” come together was helpful.
“Being able to see the thought process that went into this from the germ of an idea to the actual installation was phenomenal for me,” he said. “When you see it finished, it looked like it had to be this way.”
An interesting bit of knowledge is the reason extermination camps were in Poland, while Germany held the concentration camps.
“Being Jewish was a genetic disease,” Hensel said. “They were looked on as a public health issue.” Although recent politics did not influence this exhibit because it had been planned for so long, Hensel said it serves as a reminder of the atrocities of war.
To schedule an appointment to see “Kristallnacht: the bystanders,” call Susan Hensel at The Art Apartment at (517)930-1052 or at home at (517)337-8370. The exhibit will also be open for unscheduled visits on Dec. 1.
