This document describes an art exhibit by Miriam Brysk titled "Children of the Holocaust". The exhibit features 27 pieces depicting Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust framed within a tallit, representing the rite of passage they never received. Each piece names the child and where they lived and died. Brysk created the works to memorialize the 1.5 million Jewish children killed and depict their experiences. The exhibit has been displayed at several Holocaust museums and centers between 2008-2010.
8. ARTIST’S STATEMENT by Miriam Brysk
I have recently published my memoir “Amidst the Shadows
of Trees”, depicting my childhood in the Lida ghetto and in the
partisans. Dealing with the pain and emotions of my own
childhood experiences led me to consider the plight of the one
and a half million Jewish children who had not survived. I
thought of their disrupted rites of passage as beloved sons and
daughters of extended Jewish families, and their ultimate and
untimely deaths in Nazi-designated killing places. The idea for
a new art series began to emerge; I would focus on depicting
the children who died, in the context of what they are likely
to have experienced.
One of the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood is
the Bar/Bat Mitzvah at age thirteen. At that event, children
traditionally receive a tallis/tallit (prayer shawl) from their
parents. Most of the Jewish children who died in the
Holocaust, however, were too young to ever have had a Bar
Mitzvah, or to ever have worn a tallit. I, therefore, used the
imagery of the tallit to frame each piece. Each child is
contained within his own tallit, the one he never received, as a
gift of remembrance from me. To preserve historic
authenticity, each image depicts a real child victim of the
Shoah; the caption tells the city he was from and the place
where he was likely to have died.
My life, like my art, has been strongly influenced by my
childhood experiences surviving the Nazi Holocaust. My
artistic interest in the Holocaust was fueled by a visit in 2002
to the ghettos and camps of Eastern Europe. Throughout the
trip, images of my lost family were creeping back into my
consciousness, while childhood fears reemerged as frightening
nightmares. My entire being was shaking in horror as I sobbed
for my own lost family and the six million of my people who
had so inhumanely and painfully perished. I felt a deep inner
need to portray their suffering. I wanted to express these
feelings through art. This resulted in the images portrayed in
my first Holocaust art exhibit – “In a Confined Silence”, forty
pieces depicting the plight of my family and the other Jews
during the Shoah. This body of work has received rave reviews
and has been nationally exhibited in Holocaust Museums,
Municipal Art Centers and Jewish Community Centers. Three
of the pieces from this exhibit have been accepted into the
permanent collection of the Yad Vashem.
9. INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
• All the are 16" x 24", exclusive of the tzitzit, which add
another 13" to the length. They are hung by a small chain
which is attached to them at the upper corners with two
zekhor (Hebrew for remember) pins obtained from the US
Holocaust Museum. There are 27 pieces in this exhibit.
• All the images are derived from authentic photographs of
victims of the Holocaust. I received photos of ten of the
highlighted children from survivors who asked me to
preserve through art the memory of their relatives who had
perished. Others were obtained from books, or from the
Internet (mostly Web sites of organizations of survivors of
individual ghettos, some Holocaust museums). In addition
to the specific information printed on the bottom of each
tallit, an explanatory card provides further data and
context.
• Three of the children portrayed are from Paris, one is from
Amsterdam. The rest are from the ghettos of Eastern Europe
where the bulk of the Jews lived. Most of the children were
deported to extermination camps in Poland. Many others,
in the Soviet-occupied territories, were shot by
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads).
• “Children of the Holocaust” is intended as an educational
exhibit. To my knowledge, very few traveling exhibits have
been created on the children in the Shoah. My work is
totally focused on the plight of the one and a half million
Jewish children who perished. As such, it fills a void that
has long needed symbolic remembrance.
• Thus far, the exhibit has been shown at the Hamburg
Library, MI (February-March 2008); the Holocaust
Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, MI, (April-August
2008); at the Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek,
MI (Sept-Oct 2008); and will be exhibited at the Holocaust
Memorial and Educational Center of Central Florida in
Maitland, Florida, in 2009. and at the Holocaust Museum
Houston in 2010. Yad Vashem has shown interest in
including this art in the new children’s museum it is now
63. BRYSK SOLO EXHIBITS
2010 Children of the Holocaust, Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, TX
2009 Children of the Holocaust, The Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center
of Central Florida, Maitland, FL
2008 Children of the Holocaust Kellogg Community College, Battle Creek, MI
2008 Children of the Holocaust, Holocaust Memorial Center, Farmington Hills, MI
2008 Children of the Holocaust, Hamburg Community Library, Hamburg, MI
2007 In a Confined Silence, Battle Creek Art Center, Battle Creek, MI
2007 In a Confined Silence, The Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center of
Central Florida, Maitland, FL
2006 In a Confined Silence, Plymouth Community Art Center, Plymouth, MI
2006 In a Confined Silence, Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, TX
2006 In a Confined Silence, Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center,
Miami, FL
2005 In a Confined Silence, W. K. Kellogg Foundation Gallery, Battle Creek, MI.
Exhibit in conjunction with USHM Exhibit “Life in Shadows” in Battle
Creek, MI
2005 In a Confined Silence, Alfred Berkowitz Gallery, University of Michigan,
Dearborn, MI Exhibit in conjunction with The Voice/Vision Holocaust
Oral History Archive at the UM-Dearborn Mardigian Library
2005 In a Confined Silence, Hillel Student Center, University of Cincinnati,
Cincinnati, OH
2005 Transitions, Pfizer Global Research and Development Center, Ann Arbor,
MI
2004 In a Confined Silence, Janice Charach Epstein Gallery, Jewish Community
Center of Metropolitan Detroit, West Bloomfield, MI
2004 In a Confined Silence, Amster Gallery, Jewish Community Center, Ann
Arbor, MI. Sponsored by the Bobbie and Myron Levine Jewish Community
Center Cultural Art Fund
2003 Blessings, Amster Gallery, Jewish Community Center, Ann Arbor, MI
2001 Spirit, Moody Medical Gallery, Galveston, TX
GRANTS
2005 W. K. Kellogg Foundation Grant for the preparation of a travelling exhibit
for the Holocaust art series - “In a Confined Silence”
ART IN PERMANENT COLLECTIONS
2008 Three pieces from “In a Confined Silence” accepted by the Yad Vashem
