Rosemarie Koczy's works are in the collections of the Guggenheim in New York and of Yad Vashem in Israel. She claimed to be a Jew and Holocaust survivor. Now historians say that her life story was forged.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Lott
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Born in 1939 in Recklinghausen, in the Ruhr area, Rosemarie Koczy had been living in the US since the mid-1980s until her death in 2007.
The artist presented herself as a Jew who had survived two concentration camps, as she claimed in her memoir published in 2009.
However, through an exhibition of more than 100 of her works bequeathed to the city of Recklinghausen, historians have raised doubts about her life story, as initially reported by German public radio broadcasters Deutschland Funk and WDR on November 8.
Her family's name does not appear in the list of Jews who were deported from Recklinghausen, said the director of the city's archives Matthias Kordes.
Her birth certificate was also found, he explained, and it indicated that her parents and grandparents were Catholics — and not Hungarian Jews as she claimed. "She also had a Catholic baptism," Kordes added.
The artist further claimed to have been deported to the Traunstein concentration camp, one of Dachau's subcamps. "That camp was exclusively for men. There weren't any children there," the archive director pointed out.
Rosemarie Koczy in 1978Image: Gemeinfrei
The director of the Kunsthalle Recklingausen museum, Hans-Jürgen Schwalm, defended the artist's reputation. "She left behind a serious body of work," he said. She was successful in the 1970s, but never profited from her false identity, which she first began to publicize in the 1990s, the museum director added.
No one knows what drove her to portray herself as a Holocaust victim, Schwalm added.
Her Holocaust memorials in the collections of major museums
Works by Rosemarie Koczy are part of the collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York as well as Yad Vashem's, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Her works are however not part of Yad Vashem's permanent exhibition nor are they currently on display.
"Her works are part of the Yad Vashem Art Collection which contains art created before, during and after the Holocaust by Holocaust victims, survivors and artists who felt inclined to relate to the Shoah," spokesperson Simmy Allen told DW in a written statement. "Regardless of Koczy's contested status as a survivor, her art is a response to the Holocaust and the works continue to be relevant to our collection which is where they shall remain."
Ink drawings from her series "I Weave You a Shroud," which pays tribute to Holocaust victims, are at the center of the current exhibition at the Kunsthalle Recklingausen. It is on show through November 19.
Georg Möller, historian and Recklinghausen city councilor, started suspecting her forged identity after he initiated an online memorial book. His research led him to find out that Rosemarie Koczy had a difficult childhood in a dysfunctional family, spending periods in a children's home in Münsterland.
Experts publicly discussed the impact of the artist's forged memoir on November 8 in Recklinghausen.
Yad Vashem said it will study the issue pertaining to Koczy's identity and determine what actions need to be taken to accurately reflect any findings.
Following the reports, Koczy's widowed husband, Louis Pelosi, has contacted the historians who uncovered the information; he rejects all claims of falsification in his wife's memoir.
'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
