On the Way to Spend the Night in the Yard of the Kolhoz: Peasants sent a horse to trample us
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Square, textured oil painting with the image of a pink horse with blinders trampling a crowd of people wearing yellow Star of Davids. One man without a Star of David in the top left appears to be guiding the horse. There are Hebrew inscriptions in the left and upper right corners. There is a building in the background and the scene is set diagonal to the masonite square. The reverse is painted white, with a white label at the bottom right with handwritten text in English. back bottom right corner, on label in green ink : SHOSHANA NEUMAN / DONATION /"A DEADLY HORS" / OIL ON MAZONITE / PRICE $250. -
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Painting created by Shoshana Neuman around 2007 depicting an event she remembered witnessing as a 9 year old child during the Holocaust. In the fall of 1941, Shoshana’s family was deported from the Czernowitz ghetto in Romania to the Transnistria region in Romanian occupied Ukraine. They were forced to march for six weeks with little food or rest and no shelter. Soon after they arrived at the Bershad ghetto, four family members died due to the brutal march or disease: her father, age 41, her brother, Yosile, age 14, her cousin, ager 10, and her sister, Esti, age 6. Shoshana and her mother were released in 1944 after the region was retaken by the Soviet Union. Shoshana immigrated to Israel in 1950. Around 1970, Shoshana decided to take a painting class and began creating works based on her memories of what she saw and experienced as a child. As she told an interviewer in 2010 about a similar work: “I have no family pictures. I painted this from memory, and it’s all I have to remember them.”
Shoshana Neuman was born in 1932 in Czernowitz, Bukovina (Ukraine), then part of Romania. In 1940, it was reintegrated into the Ukraine which was part of the Soviet Union. Her father was born in 1900 and she had an older brother, Yosile, born in 1927, and a younger sister, Esti, born in 1935. In the fall of 1941, Shoshana’s family and the other Jewish inhabitants were deported from the Czernowitz ghetto to Transnistria, a region between the Bug and the Dniester Rivers given to Romania after Romania and Germany conquered the Ukraine that July and August. Shoshana and her family travelled there by foot on a six week forced march with little food or rest and no shelter. Her sister became unable to walk because of the blisters of her feet and had to be carried by their father. They crossed the Dniester River on rafts and the Romanian soldiers pushed many Jews into the water and watched them drown. Some people bartered their clothes for food along the way. Soon after they reached the Bershad ghetto, four members of Shoshana’s family died of starvation and disease: her father, who was 41, her 14 year old brother, and her 10 year old cousin. Her 6 year old sister, Esti, died of typhus and Shoshana stayed with her body for over a week until it was removed. Shoshana and her mother lived in the Bershad ghetto until the spring of 1944 when the Soviet Army re-conquered the region. Shoshana and her mother returned to Czernowitz which was again part of the Soviet Union. She was given a set of watercolors for her birthday and she began to draw without stopping. In 1945, her teachers discovered her talent and the school principal arranged an exhibition of her work in town. From 1946-1949, as partof a state controlled intervention by a Zionist organization, Shoshana was sent to Romania where she lived in several orphanages in different cities. She studied Hebrew and prepared for immigration to Israel. Eventually the Romanian government transferred the care of the children from the Zionist organizations to Communist ones. Shoshana was sent to an ORT school (Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor / Organization for Rehabilitation through Training), a Jewish non-profit that trained displaced people in technical trades. In 1950, she received her immigration certificate for Israel. Around 1970, Shoshana decided to take a painting class and began creating works based on her memories of what she saw and experienced as a child during the Holocaust. Her works were shown in an exhibition at Yad Vashem in 2010 and, as she told an interviewer: ““I have no family pictures. I painted this from memory, and it’s all I have to remember them.”
overall: Height: 11.375 inches (28.893 cm) | Width: 11.125 inches (28.258 cm)
The painting was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007 by Shoshana Neuman.