In May 1944, Dr. Samuel Birnfeld, rabbi and religious teacher, completes the translation of Sándor Petőfi’s János Vitéz into Hebrew. A few months later, on 20 October, the Arrow Cross Nazis dragged him from his apartment in Pest, first to be chained up and then to be sent to Austria on a death march.
In his rucksack, he carried the Tanach, Antal Szerb’s History of Hungarian Literature and manuscripts of Petőfi’s Hebrew translations. Among the surviving works Birnfeld drew as a preference alongside his Hebrew literary translations is an unfinished hagada sketch of several chapters in which he parallels the exodus of Jews from Egypt with his own experiences as a labourer. For him, however, liberation never came, and he died of starvation in the Felixdorf camp on 28 December 1944, aged 38.
In our latest exhibition in Pesach, we commemorate Birnfeld’s tragic death, which became the starting point for the works we have produced.
Participants: Böröcz András, Fischer Judit, Hajgató Terézia, Július Gyula, Kicsiny Balázs, Kósa Gergely, Láng Orsolya, Rácmolnár Sándor, Roskó Gábor, Szemző Zsófia, Takács Máté, Wechter Ákos