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Autobiographical watercolor of a partisan standoff against German soldiers

Object | Accession Number: 2006.125.63

Watercolor by Arie Singer depicting himself at thirteen years, his mother, Chaya, a friend, Polania, and two other partisans leaving their camp clearing to go into the forest on patrol. It is from a series created from 1985-2000 based upon memories and events from his youth as a partisan fighter in the forests northeast of Vilna, Poland, (Vilnius, Lithuania) and in Belarus from 1943-1944. After the Soviet occupation of Vilna in late 1939, Arie's 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
Partisans Lokda : tomorrow murder between 4 and 5, 3.9.43
Series Title
Partisans Near Belarus
Date
creation:  approximately 1985-2000
depiction:  1943 March 09
Geography
creation: Tel Aviv (Israel)
depiction: Belarus
Language
Hebrew
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 15:21:15
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn523912