us-005578-irn522726-irn522818
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 a wide white cobblestone street with a little blond haired girl wearing a red dress watching 4 men with white armbands carry the body of a woman in a blue blanket; her head hangs off the end and blood is dripping onto the street. In the background is a sidewalk, fence, and 3 buildings with tiled roofs and paned windows. There is a red slash of paint at the top right. The artist’s signature and date are inscribed in red paint in the lower left corner. It is in a dark brown wooden frame with a gold painted interior edge.
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
date: 1943 April
has beginning date: 1987-01-01
has end date: 1987-12-31
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: heb
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn522818
is or was included in: us-005578-irn522726
record resource extent: overall: Height: 18.875 inches (47.943 cm) | Width: 23.000 inches (58.42 cm) | Depth: 1.375 inches (3.493 cm) pictorial area: Height: 15.500 inches (39.37 cm) | Width: 19.625 inches (49.848 cm)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Oil painting created by Sophia Kalski in 1987 about her life as a 10 year girl in the ghetto in Trembowla, Poland (Terebovlia, Ukraine), in April 1943. It depicts a young blond haired girl watching 4 men carry the dead body of a woman dripping blood from a blue blanket. There is a slash of red paint in the upper right. In Sophia’s words:"Murder in the street. In Trembowla ghetto, in the spring of 1943. A woman walked in the ghetto and all of a sudden, a German murdered her for no reason. Hearing the screaming, I walked out and I saw four policemen removing her wrapped in a blanket and drops of blood falling on the road" 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 of a young girl watching 4 men carry a woman shot to death by the Germans in the Trembowla ghetto