United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Artist Pinchas Shaar (1923‐1996) was born Pinchas Szwarc in 1923 in Łódź to carpenter and lumberyard owner Jakub Szwarc (1892‐?) and Chaja Fajga Szwarc (nee Zychlinska, 1892‐?). He had two brothers, Josef and Lajb, and a sister, Ester Ita. When Germany invaded Poland, Pinchas escaped with his brothers and headed east to Soviet occupied Poland, but the three returned to the Łódź ghetto to protect their family. Pinchas worked in a factory, for the health department, and for the statistical office. When the Germans liquidated the ghetto in 1944, Pinchas, his brothers, and his father were selected for transport to Koenigs Wusterhausen, a sub camp of Sachenshausen. Pinchas was then sent to either the Kelterborn & Stenvers factory or the Stenvers labor camp. The camp was liberated by Soviet forces in 1945, and Pinchas and his family were reunited and returned to Łódź in May. They learned that his sister and her child had been killed in a concentration camp. Pinchas chose to leave Poland and was hospitalized at a sanatorium in Gauting, Germany, where he credits a nurse with reviving his interest in art and in life by bringing him art supplies. Pinchas left the sanatorium for Munich and then for Paris in 1947, where he continued to develop his artistic vision. He joined his family in Israel in 1953 and then moved to New York in 1975.
Copyright Holder: Judith M. Shaar
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The Pinchas Shaar photographs are arranged as three series: I. Pinchas Shaar photographs, circa 1910-1975, II. Mendel Grosman photographs, 1939-1944, III. Printed image, circa 1950-circa 1959
The Pinchas Shaar photographs consist of black and white photographs of Pinchas Shaar and his family in the Łódź ghetto and after the war in Germany, France, and Israel; photographs of life in the Łódź ghetto by Mendel Grossman; and a printed image of a destroyed synagogue.
Pinchas Shaar photographs