us-005578-irn524007
type: RecordSet
archival history: The painting was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Motke Blum in 2007.
biographical history: Motke Blum was born in Racaciuni (Moldava), Romania, on April 5, 1925, to Arie Lieb (1898-1983), and Leah Josef, (9/1904- 12/1989) His father was a shoemaker. Motke has two siblings, Haim, born in 1923, and Nissan, born in 1932. Prior to World War II, his family moved to Bucharest, Romania, where Motke attended a Jewish school and belonged to the Gordonia Zionist movement. In January 1939, Romanian soldiers terrorized Jews in Bucharest, randomly beating Jewish youth. At the age of 14, Motke experienced the brutality firsthand, when he was marched to the city square and forced to stand against a wall for hours while the soldiers beat and whipped him. At 15, he was taken to the Polygon forced labor camp near Bucharest, where he built artificial mountains with a shovel for the army’s target practice. He was given a quota, and if it was not reached, he was beaten. He was transferred to Obor forced labor camp which received all the supply trains for the city. He unloaded vegetables and cut frozen logs in the middle of the night. During the day, he painted the walls of the train station and warehouses to make them presentable for inspection by the army generals. Motke also worked extinguishing fires, clearing ruined buildings of dead bodies and debris caused by Allied bombing. Motke continued his work with the Gordonia movement, by secretly meeting at a Rabbi’s house and helping refugees hide until ships could take them to Palestine. He escaped from Obor, but was captured and imprisoned, until a Gordonia member bribed a guard to resend Motke to Obor. The second time Motke escaped, he gave up his place on a departing ship for refugees who were from a death camp and in worse condition. He returned to forced labor and escaped a third time. He was assigned a spot on a refugee ship departing from Constanza, Romania, on the Black Sea. He was given a certificate granting him legal rights to emigrate to Palestine, in 1944. He was to board the Mefkure, but a friend asked him to ch…
physical characteristics and technical requirements: Rectangular white paper with an image in pencil and black, white, and gray gouache. It depicts a man and a woman, painted in black, standing to the left, near a person, painted in white, who is being hung from a gallows. Four elongated, abstract white figures dominate the center of the work. Barbed wire fencing extends across the image from left to right. It is signed by the artist in the lower left corner. back, upper left corner, pencil : Hebrew text
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
date: approximately 2004
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: irn524007
record resource extent: overall: Height: 19.625 inches (49.848 cm) | Width: 26.000 inches (66.04 cm)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Abstract impressionistic white painting created by Motke Blum in 2004, evoking his experiences in forced labor camps in Romania during the Holocaust. His"need for constant renewa" led to minimalist work done in gradations of white. Motke was from Romania where violent persecution of Jews was common by the late 1930s. It increased when the revolutionary Fascist Iron Guard took over the country in September 1940. That year, 15 year old Motke was sent to a forced labor camp near Bucharest, then to Obor labor camp where he worked 20 hours a day, unloading trains and clearing bombed areas of rubble and dead bodies. He escaped and was recaptured twice, and was successful in his third attempt in 1944, all with the assistance of the Gordonia Zionist movement. He was smuggled out of Romania on a fishing boat and eventually reached Palestine.
title: Abstract painting of a prison camp with ghostlike figures and a hanging created postwar by a former inmate