| Travels
in
Eastern
Europe
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Susan Weinberg
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susan@studio409art.com |
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| One of the towns from
which my family came is Radom, Poland. My
grandfather was the only one in his family to immigrate
to the United
States. A
large
family
remained
behind
only
to
perish
in
the
Holocaust. I developed a Shtetlink on Radom for use by other researchers with family from that town. A Shtetlink is a website on Jewishgen.org that gathers information together on the community. In putting this together I reached out to many people who had family from this town and found some wonderful gems that often served as inspiration for my artwork. One in particular came from an Israeli friend. It was a homemade film of Radom dating back to 1937. While not particularly good quality it captured a cross-section of the Jewish community. Very religious looking Jewish men were filmed as well as many far more secular in appearance, probably not much different than my family then in the United States. The film also captured the Jewish institutions within the community. It represents a happy time, everyone is waving at the camera, dancing, toasting and holding their children up. Little could they have imagined the horrors that would confront the community just five years later when most of those filmed died in the Holocaust. I took about 75 stills from the film and posted them on the Shtetlink. Juxtaposed next to each other, I was struck with the way they captured the community in a moment in time and decided to paint the community via this film. I am interested in getting a feeling for the lives of my ancestors rather than only focusing on their deaths. The film provides a window by which to do that. Because I wanted the feeling of snapshots I decided to keep my paintings to a small size of 12" x !2" . The paintings are done on wood panels and are painted in the style of a a pinhole camera with muted colors and a slightly shaded border around the edges. Hence the name, "A Hole in Time". I wanted to provide a glimpse of what life looked like in the Jewish community of that time. Soon after I began this series I connected with a woman who lives in my community who is a survivor of Radom. The war broke out when she was 15 so her memories are those of a school girl. Now in her late 80s she shared her recollections with me of the once vibrant Radom Jewish community that this series seeks to capture. She also shared with me her family photos from before the war and during the time of the ghetto. They had been hidden in her brother's and her husband's shoes throughout the camps. In April 2011 we traveled to Radom for the opening of an exhibition of my artwork and her photos and story at the Resursa Obywatelska, the Arts and Culture Center in April 2011. |
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