Eulogy
An elderly man, dear to Rosemarie from years of correspondence and the
occasional phone conversation (mostly with his wife), had died. Indeed,
Rosemarie had never met the man, and the news was fresh. As I entered
the studio to offer my condolences, she turned toward me and, transfixed
with grief, blurted through tears, “But they never come back!”
Years later, near death herself, in great pain and almost blind, again
Rosemarie was in her studio, hunched over the drawing table. She was
struggling to read the day’s prayer in a little novena booklet to Sister
Euphrasia, a revered German nun who died a few years after the Second
World War after ministering to prisoners and other victims.
Rosemarie was beseeching the blessed sister to intercede on behalf of
her niece’s severely handicapped son. Knowing how ill she herself was,
I went up to her and whispered, “Can’t you pray for yourself too?” Her
reply: “God doesn’t care about me, so I’m praying for Marco.”
******
In Germany two officials from Rosemarie’s hometown are busy
deconstructing her life. Using archival evidence (some of which Rosemarie
herself openly acknowledged in her memoirs), they found she is not listed
among the city’s Jewish population, was in fact baptized. They have gone
on to question her deportation and subsequent internment in two
concentration camps, as well as many subsidiary details of her life story.
I have responded to some of these claims and conclusions (see Affidavit).
The facticity or spuriousness of their allegations should further be answered
by the fact, evident to all who knew her, that Rosemarie bore unceasing
witness to the horror descended upon the Jews and others in the Holocaust.
Contacted by a journalist for the New York Times researching the matter,
officials at Yad Vashem stated that, regardless of the verdict, Rosemarie
would continue to be honored for her devotion to the Jewish people.
Furthermore, Rosemarie never profited from her identification as a Jew and
Holocaust survivor, beyond finding in it an answer for her traumatic early
years (which are also documented in the historical record).
When all is said and done, the essential Rosemarie Koczÿ, my companion
for almost twenty-eight years, may be crystallized — alongside her almost
15,000 artworks spanning over forty years — in the two paragraphs which
introduce this statement. So may she be judged, and cherished.
Louis Pelosi August 2019