Hidden in plain sight: post-Holocaust mnemonic objects and material traces of Arnon Goldfinger's 'The flat'

Arnon Goldfinger retraces his German Jewish grandparents’ relationship with Leopold von Mildenstein (1902–1968), a former SS officer and Judenreferent, through mnemonic objects and testimonial artefacts. He approaches his grandparents’ keepsakes and mementos with a keen eye for minute details and lost traces. As memory and materiality become interdependent co-producers of memory work, Goldfinger reminds us that although ‘matters’ or objects are full of memories, they do not speak for themselves; they can only ‘illuminate their human and social context’ through our interactions with them. It is precisely for this reason that Goldfinger’s memory archive – Gerda and Kurt Tuchler’s flat in Tel Aviv – seems devoid of history. Whereas every nook and cranny is filled with heirlooms, the entire apartment is replete with an ever-present void of a silenced familial past.