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Autobiographical watercolor of Jewish partisans around a fire in a snow covered forest at night

Object | Accession Number: 2006.125.55

Watercolor created by Arie Singer depicting a night scene of himself with a large group of men, women, and children with Star of David badges warming themselves at a bonfire. It is from a series created from 1985-2000 based upon memories and events from his youth as a 13 year old partisan fighter in the forests northeast of Vilna, Poland, (Vilnius, Lithuania) and in Belarus from 1943-1944. It is from a series created from 1985-2000 based upon memories and events from his youth as a 13 year old partisan fighter in the forests northeast of Vilna, Poland, (Vilnius, Lithuania) and in Belarus from 1943-1944. After the Soviet occupation of Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), in late 1939, nine year old Arie and his family fled to Glembokie (Hlybokaye, Belarus). When Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, the area was assaulted by German mobile killing units, who with the help of the local populace, murdered thousands of Jews. Arie and his mother were forced into the Jewish ghetto. His father, Zvi, age 38, was killed in the massacres at Ponary in 1941. As the pogroms continued into the spring of 1943, Arie and his mother, Chaya, age 35, escaped the ghetto, which was being destroyed by the Germans. They went into hiding in the Nievier Forest near Vilna, where they engaged in partisan activities. The area was liberated by the Red Army in July 1944. After some years in a displaced persons camps, Arie and Chaya emigrated to Israel in the late 1940s. Colonel Singer began creating this series of paintings about his Holocaust experiences in the mid 1980s as rehabilitation following a stroke in 1975.

Artwork Title
Jewish Partisans Warming Around Bonfires in Winter, Vilna
Series Title
Partisans in Belarus
Date
creation:  approximately 1985-2000
Geography
creation: Tel Aviv (Israel)
Classification
Art
Category
Paintings
Object Type
Naive art (aat)
Credit Line
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Arie Singer
 
Record last modified: 2022-08-01 15:10:13
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn523721