Mira Hamermesh family papers

Mira Hamermesh (Polish: Hamermesz) was born in Lodz, Poland on 15 July 

1923. Mira was the youngest of three children and she was raised in a wealthy middle class Jewish family. Her father, Josef Meir Hamermesz, ran a rubber factory. Both her father and her mother, Fajga Hamermesz (née Lerer), died during the war. Her parents were transported to the Lodz-Litzmannstadt ghetto where her mother died of starvation in 1943. Her father died later in Auschwitz.

Mira escaped from Poland with her brother, Mietek. She moved first to Vilnius, Lithuania, where her brother was arrested by Soviet troops. Mira made it to Palestine where she was reunited with her sister, Genia, who had already moved there in 1938. Mira studied at the Bezalel Art School and after a scholarship from the British Council she moved to the UK in 1947 to study at the Slade School of Fine Arts. She married Richard Coopman in 1952 and together they had one son, Jeremy Coopman. She worked as a painter and documentary director for the BBC and Channel 4. Her documentaries have won many awards, including the special jury award at the Banff festival in 1986, and the Golden Gate award from the San Francisco international film festival in 1992.