mentalblog.com comments:
"I was left in Poland by my uncle Meir, the only other survivor of my large family, who emigrated to Israel immediately after the war. For fifteen more years, I lived among the post-war Poles, in a place where Jewish life was destroyed and my Jewishness had to be hidden in order to survive against the odds of Nazism Communism and Anti¥Semitism.
Deep seated historical love and hate relationship between Poles, who saved my life, and the Jews, who were forced out of their devastated homeland, left me scared. Unprotected. I was subjected to many humiliations and lived a double identity personae, suffering from these unresolved dilemmas.
The strength of my ancestral links allowed me to return to my Jewish roots. The journey began when at twenty I visited my distant relatives in Metz, a city of Eastern France. The actual contact with my Jewish family was disaster. They were unable to distance themselves from their prejudices against the Poles. To understand my emotional and social situation was beyond their intellectual and human capacity. They were as intolerant as Polish anti-semites I knew so well. Unable to welcome "a Shikse" and to express their gratitude to my adoptive father Joseph Jaszczuk, still living in Poland at that time.
Despite this first, discouraging encounter with my Jewish relatives, the sound of hassidic music heard at neighboring Jewish home, deeply touched my heart. Mysteriously familiar, it reminded me of the fate of my parents and I cried all day when deciding against all reason, that my place was among the Jews.
This apparently irrational move is understandable in the context of my previous condition as a damned Jewish child, guilty of surviving the hell, stranger among strangers.
Until that time, I had turned away from knowing the details of the destruction of Jews in Poland and elsewhere, trying to ignore their fate. It was too hard for a young girl to understand the meaning of these past events and to remain sound of mind.
Therefore, I tried to live like every other Polish girl of my age, but I was not spared the humiliations of being a "dirty Jew." I did not know real Jews, but only mythical, caricatural ones.
France freed me temporarily from my troubled past and suddenly I obtained a new status as "a Jew with a right to life." this new dignity was intoxicating. Thus, I was without a past, warmly received by the Jewish Community in Strasbourg, as well as my adoptive father, Joseph Jaszczuk who joined me there with their help. I succeeded in my studies at the Faculty of law, married a Jew, have two Jewish daughters and even a granddaughter, Kim Esther Abitbol.
Hidden for such a long time, I still live in my complex world filled with unanswered questions about human nature. I resent those who refuse to know, and use their ignorance as an excuse for continuing their opulent and often irresponsible life. I believe that we are all responsible for the injustice being committed in front of our eyes and if we use the excuse of our impotence towards warlords and sadists, our passive behavior will guarantee their continued success.
This is why, when on the 26th day of October 1992, exactly fifty years to the day, after my escape from Jewish fate and without prior experience, I painted the first image coming directly from my repressed memory I knew the time had come to assume my Jewish heritage through my newly discovered gift of painting and poetical writing in all languages in which I lived. Therefore this art work born out of my undying memory, is dedicated to my Jewish and Polish parents and friends."
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/r...ponses/benezra/
Congratulations for pointing at these beautiful and srongly evocative paintings of Genia Benezra Tyrangiel .
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