Ploughed Over

In Turobin, Lublin Province, farmers ploughed over a Jewish cemetery. In previous seasons, they sowed wheat on the site, but now rape is growing there. In 2022, historian Professor Sabina Bober publicised the case in the media. Field research conducted at the site confirmed that the inhabitants of Turobin were aware of the existence of the cemetery for followers of another religion. Despite this, the site was also used to dispose of pig carcasses. The destruction and deliberate littering of sites associated with the Jewish community continues to this day, des pite a growing awareness of the coexistence of Jewish and non-Jewish people in the past, the tragedy of the Holocaust and the changes that have taken place in attitudes towards ethnic and religious diversity. At the beginning of the 20th century, about 70% ofTurobin’s population was Jewish. In late May/ early April 1942, the Jewish community was liquidated and around 200 people were murdered. Their bodies were most probably buried on the site of the now ploughed field. Driving agricultural machinery over it, dumping dead animals there or allowing dogs to dig up human bones is a manifestation of simultaneously depriving the dead of their humanity and deliberately erasing their memory, both underpinned by antiSemitism. The installation consists of a photograph of a child’s mandible found in a field in Turobin, a cast of a pig’s bone from the same site placed on a coat of arms, and large-format photographs of a rape field.