“Through the eyes of those who survived and bore witness to evil, we can recognise what they already know: black holes are not going anywhere. They are ever-present. They are here, now.”
A Glimpse at the Abyss is a collection of early memories charting the descent into Nazism, drawn from survivor testimonies housed in the Holocaust Centre North Archive. Their stories are interwoven and threaded together in a narrative chain that ends in 1939, before the outbreak of war in Europe.
Testimony is framed through the lens of Ashkenazi Jewish illuminated manuscripts (c. 1000–1500), primarily from the Rhineland. The weaving continues through time and space, binding together moments in a shared cultural memory. The result is a layered tapestry, marked by the scars left by absolute power, oppression, racism, religious persecution, systemic violence, and death.
This work is a meditation on the “astrodynamics of evil”, a recognition of what threatens to encompass all. The hope and focus of this collection is not only to document, but to illuminate. To show how the world around these children, teenagers, and young adults collapsed as everyday prejudice, “ordinary” racism became radicalised state violence.
From their memories, we are invited to confront the abyss, feel its pull, but not fall in. Their survival compels us towards a future where such darkness cannot rise again.
A Glimpse at the Abyss was produced as part of Memorial Gestures, Holocaust Centre North’s residency programme for contemporary artists, writers, and translators.
About Chebo Roitter Pavez:
Sebastian “Chebo” Roitter Pavez is a visual artist, graphic designer, writer, and publisher from Buenos Aires. The central question of his work lies in the relationship between images, text, and the mechanism for truth construction. His work intertwines images and documents from the public domain within forgotten histories, and apocryphal traditions, creating speculative objects, inviting new conversations around cultural heritage management, and challenging art’s function in public spaces.
Chebo is the co-director of artist-run publishing house, Bucle Editorial. Find out more here.
Preview a sample of the zine below:
Product Details:
- Publisher: Holocaust Centre North
- Published: May 2025
- Product Type: Zine
- Length: 34 pages
This zine was printed by Footprint Workers Co-op, Leeds. Find out more about their work here.