Excerpt from a conversion with FRED TERNA (born 1923 in Vienna, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, Shoa survivor) on February 3rd, 2021.



...I am connected culturally with Central Europe, the last 60-70 years living in the United States....


Open gates, closed gates, i mean it includes entire gamut of culture. That is, which side am I on? And you have the option to go in and out? Or am I locked out? Or am I locked in.


.....It is loaded with feelings, with memories, with just a life all together that is we are spiritually in transit somewhere, from somewhere to somewhere the think that looking at the pictures, the photos, but comes across to me as quite interesting are the numbers, the house number is often highlighted. For some reason, the way you’ve the photos were taken, the light was not planned. It was probably light that was available. That is easy from the outside from the inside. So the here’s another element to the gaze, that is the viewer. What am I looking at? And why is that gate lit from the inside, I’m looking at specific one right now. I can see inside. But there are other gates, where all I can see is a dark surface with a number on it. Makes my mind reel. I appreciate the attempt that you, the photographer, is telling stories, telling stories about people and why they are there in front of the gate. Most of it is in front to the gate. Some of them are friendly, some of them are forbidding, there is always a number. There’s more behind it, behind that num- ber are people, or were people one time. I remember one number in Vienna, Friedlgasse 49. Why? I don’t know. It’s in my memory, years and years ago, we went, my now wife and our son, to Vienna to show them where i grew up. And we looked it up Friedlgasse number 49, terribly unimportant place. Except there it is in my head. The place. And i can’t remember thing from there, ....I vaguely remember my grandmother living there.......And obviously, we moved away from Vienna to Prague. When i was about five years old. So have no memory of it.......


......I’m a painter primarily but I’m trying to figure out a world in which I want to live in, which I want to have our son live in, and the following generations. I am very much in- volved in the community and was involved for the past many, many years, part of various communal groups, not actually political but how are we going to shape our axis. I would have to sit down and carefully and formulated it, but it’s very much in my mind, what is a good community? What is an open, fair and just world. My job is just the painting, let somebody else build the house and the gate you collected and build the insides of the houses.....But behind all these images is the world. What kind of world was there, Is there, would like to be there. The doors are loaded with all its meanings. I’m very much moved by the images. I appreciate you take these photos.......


......It was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Prague, Petschek Palace, and they put me in front of the building. I was too young then, I was interrogated, they wouldn’t know what to do with me. So they just beat me up and put me in front of their headquarters. I was trying to go home but I wasn’t sure that I should know what would home be like, you have to imagine the atmosphere of Prague then, Jewish community was in fear, i was undecided where to go and nowhere to go to, you were really literally trapped inside a system and we didn’t know what it was going to be, but you sort of try to deal with it on a moment to moment way, a moment situation, and until one landed in a specific place, it was uncertainty and fear, i remember arriving at that place in Prague that eventually led to my first camp and i didn’t know what was going to happen it was a puzzling.....


I think that I’ve learned one thing. So all these years, how to live with the past. Living in a good way, make life sensible. At this very moment, what’s going to happen? I’m very, very fortunate, I know it, I’m very, very lucky, I have a wonderful home, wife, son, the job that I like, the community is pretty good. And this is what I’m dealing with, how to live with the past. And see, that is the only thing that I have learned then, is figuring out for myself, not for the world, what is the proper way to live, and in my case, it was easy to be involved, to the extent that i physically can, i am 97 so, my physical mobility, my possibility of functioning is limited, right. But within my limits, I live a sensible life. And i think that that is all that I can teach, be involved, be involved in the world around you. Shape the world. When I was talking with the kids in Vienna, whom I didn’t know, I said, you know, it’s your world, it’s you, you will shape this is the world you will live in, better be involved and know what you’re doing. And keep feeling, thinking of the world around you. Be involved. You’re responsible for each other.