The object of memory

the long version

Once there was a village in Palestine called Ein Houd. By the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, all the Abu al-Hayjas of Ein Houd had been dispersed or exiled or had gone into hiding, although their homes were not destroyed. In 1953 Marcel Janco, a Romanian Jewish artist exiled during the Holocaust, received permission from the Israeli government to establish an artists' cooperative community in the houses of the village. The village was renamed Ein Hod. In the meantime, the Arab inhabitants of Ein Houd moved two kilometers up a neighboring mountain and illegally built a new village. The two villages - Jewish Ein Hod and the new Arab Ein Houd - continue to exist in complex and dynamic opposition. In The Object of Memory, Susan Slyomovics explores the ways in which the people of Ein Houd and Ein Hod remember and reconstruct their past in light of their present - and their present in light of their past. She examines their narratives, material culture, and personal and communal interpretations of geographical landmarks.