My mum, Jenny Stolzenberg, has died of viral encephalitis after treatment for cancer, aged 68. Although best known for her work in recent years as a ceramicist, she had also been a psychotherapist, Relate counsellor, teacher, youth worker, jewellery maker and personal trainer.
Jenny was born in London, the only child of Cissie (nee Solley), a seamstress, and William Powell, a teacher at Chiswick grammar school. She was educated a Walpole grammar school in Ealing, trained as a teacher, and taught drama and English for several years, mostly at Acland Burghley school in Tufnell Park, then retrained as a counsellor and psychotherapist, all the while creating in clay in her spare time.
Her father, William (aka Wilhelm Pollak), a Viennese Jew, had been interned by the Nazis in Dachau and Buchenwald in the 1930s, managing to reach the UK just before the outbreak of war, although the rest of his family were to perish in the Holocaust. He never spoke about his experiences. This lack of dialogue was deeply painful to Jenny, and after William’s death in 1990 she started a conversation with him through her work as an artist, most notably with the installation piece Forgive and Do Not Forget, which drew on her father’s words.
This was the graduation piece for which she gained a first in ceramics from the University of Westminster in 2002. Jenny was inspired by Primo Levi’s description of the Auschwitz ceremony “the changing of the shoes”, in which prisoners had seconds to grab from a pile of shoes, resulting in them having to endure wearing odd, ill-fitting shoes. In painstaking detail, she produced 70 pairs of mis-matched ceramic shoes. The effect was profoundly moving. Although the subject matter was so horrifying, Jenny wanted to honour the beauty of the lives destroyed. She said: “The deed was ugly, but the victims were not.”
Museums and galleries all over the world requested the shoes, resulting in her replicating this installation many times over. In London, her work was exhibited at venues including the Ben Uri Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, the Jewish Museum and the London Jewish Cultural Centre. The pinnacle of achievement for her was a request for a permanent installation for the memorial museum at Buchenwald.
A committed vegetarian and dedicated runner for decades, Jenny brought energy, colour and passion to everything she did. She had a constant hunger for new challenges and experiences that left most people breathless. She ran seven marathons and cycled across multiple countries, raising thousands of pounds for charity. She felt keenly that she had a lucky life, and thought deeply about how she could improve the lives of those around her. She derived unbridled joy at bestowing happiness on others. She loved freely and passionately, and was loved by many.
Jenny is survived by her husband Lawrence Stolzenberg, whom she married in 1976, and by two children, me and my sister, Mirry.
