The pen, the pencil that was here to try to write the impossible story is suddenly broken. Only the pebbles that mark the visitation to the grave remain untouched, solid, stubbornly casting their somber grey shadow. And then, suddenly, fingers reach inside the drawings for the yellow star. A hand appears on the scene, a hand reaching for the debris, a hand wrapped in the ceremonial leather straps of the T fillin of prayer. But the hand remains empty.
Nothing here can be grasped, can be touched, nothing here can fall into place.
The space of Breverman s drawings is a fragmented space, a space that cannot contain all the debris left behind by the fire. The debris refuses to fall into a neat pile. Nonetheless, in his obsessive effort to hold in his hands some of the debris, the detritus of the Holocaust, Breverman has managed to make us see, make us touch, what so far had been unseen and untouched. That the name Federman should be part of this design moves me deeply, for it is not only my name, but the name of those in my family who were reduced to ashes. For this, I am immensely grateful to Harvey Breverman.