us-005578-irn522726-irn522808
type: RecordSet
physical characterisitics and technical requirements: Oil painting on canvas depicting a young blonde haired girl in a blue coat standing alone in the falling snow between 2 women, each with a small child, and a 3rd woman, all in coats and scarves, in front of a light brown wooden fence topped with barbed wire. The women are wearing white armbands. The white snow covered foreground has brown footprints. On the right is a multi-story gray building with a windows and a brown door. There is a pointed red slash of paint at the top right. The artist’s signature and date are inscribed in the lower right. It is in a dark brown painted wooden frame.
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
date: 1943 January
has beginning date: 1986-01-01
has end date: 1986-12-31
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: heb
has record set type: Item
history: The painting was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2004 by Sophia Kalski.
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…
identifier: irn522808
is or was included in: us-005578-irn522726
record resource extent: overall: Height: 18.750 inches (47.625 cm) | Width: 22.750 inches (57.785 cm) | Depth: 1.375 inches (3.493 cm) pictorial area: Height: 15.250 inches (38.735 cm) | Width: 19.250 inches (48.895 cm)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Oil painting created by Sophia Kalski in 1987 about her life as a 9 year girl in the ghetto in Lwow, Poland (L’viv, Ukraine), from summer 1942 - March 1943. It depicts a young blond haired girl standing in the snow with a line of people in front of a barbed wire topped fence. In Sophia’s words:"Lwow, winter 1943. I walk round and round all alone in the streets and I don't know - should I go left or right.." 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 standing alone at the Lwow ghetto fence in the falling snow