When the Americans liberated Dachau, the young prisoner Arnold Unger became the clerk and "office boy" of the Americans who worked to resettle the surviving fellow prisoners.
Though Arnold's European family had all perished, this inspiring youngster with his knowledge of where everything was in the camp, and speaking 5 languages endeared himself to his rescuers. When, at last, distant American relatives were located, and Arnold was preparing to leave, the soldiers created for him an album of art, and photographs which chronicles his specific journey into the horrors of the Nazi camps, and his remarkable renaissance as a giver, a romantic, and an intellectual. The care and comprehensiveness of that handmade Album, creates an experience when handling the object which instantly expresses the affection of the makers and givers, and the extraordinary impact Arnold made on them. In that way, The Dachau Album is the evocative pinnacle of the Book Arts genre.
The Dachau Album Project has the ear of Pope Francis, and Vice President Harris, Mr. Emhoff, and President Biden, testifying with his compelling response to an unforeseeable need.
The Original Album, will soon become a part of the Permanent collection of Rare Books at the Library of congress. BOOK ARTS has completed a 5-year project to restore the original, and create 5 exact replicas of the album, to teach with clarity to a confused world of the dangers which lurk, and the necessity of hope and vision to overcome them.
This blog will chronicle the Album Project undertaken on behalf of Arnold's Daughter, Shari Unger, who only knew her dad of course, as a grown man. Astonishingly, she only learned of his time at Dachau after his tragic death, with her discovery of his album.
In my years working on the album project, I have come to know Arnold as a child, and my time with him, with meticulous restoration, and conservation responsibility, has me forever changed.
In the coming weeks I will share the story of the Dachau Album Project, and our part of this story we are so deeply proud in which to share. Below is a video from five years ago, when my journey with Arnold, was beginning.
