us-005578-irn522726-irn522804
type: RecordSet
archival history: The painting was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2004 by Sophia Kalski.
biographical history: Sofia (Zosia) Korpoltz was born on January 7, 1933, in Trembowla, Poland (Terebovlia, Ukraine), to Nachum Natan, born in 1905 and Sidonia Sara Stern Korpoltz, born in 1910, also in Trembowla. Natan was a radio technician. The family was not particularly observant of Jewish traditions, though Sara had been raised in a Jewish observant home. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Trembowla came under Soviet occupation for a year and a half. Then, in June 1941 Germany launched an attack on the Soviet Union, and the town was occupied by the Germans. In the second half of 1942, Germans forced the Jews into a ghetto. Natan Korpoltz managed to escape to Lvov, Poland (Lviv, Ukraine), while Sofia stayed in her grandfather's house in Trembowla, together with her mother. Natan found a family willing to hide Sofia, since she was blond and people would easily assume that she wasn't Jewish. However, the family soon decided that it was too dangerous and Sofia was sent back to her father to the ghetto. Natan worked as a forced laborer and they moved frequently around the ghetto, sleeping on stairs and in hallways. The Lvov ghetto was sealed in the fall of 1942. The long days when her father was at work were difficult for Sophia, as it was rarely safe enough for children to go out and play. When they did, as Sophie recalled later, they always played the same game, building bridges. And as she remembers them, the games “lacked the joy of childhood. Already then, the children didn’t know how to laugh.” Food was scarce. In early December, Sofia and her father sold all of their possessions to purchase one bowl of soup and a potato at the restaurant in the ghetto. There were frequent Aktionen, when the Germans would round up Jews for deportation to death camps. During an Aktion on January 5 and 6, 1943, Sophia hid, without her father, in a basement with strangers. They hid behind a dividing wall made of thick green bottles. Sophia could see the flashlights of the German s…
physical characteristics and technical requirements: Oil painting on canvas depicting, on the left, a partial view of a set of brown stairs descending into a small white walled room with a brown floor, window, shelf, barrel, and trunk. Two faceless men in green uniforms stand near the stairs; one is bent at the waist shining a flashlight at a wall made of green bottles. Behind the wall is a cramped, dark space. A small blonde haired girl stands with a group of faceless people. Diffused yellow streaks of light pass through the wall, stopping near the group. At the top left is a red slash. The artist’s name is inscribed in the lower right. It is in a wooden frame painted dark brown and white.
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
date: approximately 1988, 1943 January 05-1943 January 06
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: heb
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn522804
is or was included in: us-005578-irn522726
record resource extent: overall: Height: 19.500 inches (49.53 cm) | Width: 23.375 inches (59.373 cm) | Depth: 1.500 inches (3.81 cm) pictorial area: Height: 15.375 inches (39.053 cm) | Width: 19.375 inches (49.213 cm)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Oil painting created by Sophia Kalski in 1988 about her life as a 9 year girl in the ghetto in Lwow, Poland (L’viv, Ukraine), from summer 1942 - March 1943. It depicts 2 soldiers with flashlights searching near a basement room hidden behind a wall of green bottles that conceals a group of people. In Sophia’s words:"Aktion in Lwow on fifth and sixth of Jan. 1943. I am hiding in a bunker (basement) among strangers without my parents. The bunker is divided into two parts and the dividing wall is made of thick green bottles. The flashlight that the Germans are holding while they are searching for Jews in the bunker brings terrible fright on me and it seems to me that they will discover in a moment and they will take me away to shoot me, and I have no one to trust and to rely on to take me out of this and to give me some reassurances" In early 1942, Sophia and her parents, Natan and Sarah, were imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto in Trembowla, Poland (Terebovlia, Ukraine), by the occupying Germans. Natan escaped to Lwow, and Sophia was sent to live with him. In January 1943, Natan, died of typhus. Ten year old Sophia was on her own in the ghetto until March when she was able to escape and get back to Trembowla. That summer, the Germans began to destroy the ghetto, killing or deporting its Jewish residents. Sophia and her mother escaped to Humniska, where a Gentile couple, Anna and Voitek Gutonski, hid them in an underground burrow until the Soviet army liberated the area in March 1944.
title: Painting by Sophia Kalski based on her experiences as a young girl hiding in a secret room as German soldiers search for Jews