One Tale, Many Ways To Tell It
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
“A Historical Chronicle: The Life of the European Jew in the 20th Century,” an exhibit that runs until September 18 at the Krasdale Gallery in White Plains, N.Y., depicts the rocky journey of Eastern European Jews from the shtetl to the concentration camps to modern-day Israel. The show consists of drawings, collages, photography and sketches, all by prominent Jewish artists: Roman Vishniac, Aaron Morgan, Tamar Hirschl, Elias Mandel Grossman, Abel Pann, Saul Raskin and Reba Rottenberg. Each brings to the canvas a deep responsibility to the past.
The journey begins with Vishniac in the cities and shtetls of prewar Eastern Europe, where Jews are involved in everyday activities — learning Torah, trading gifts, farming — strikingly unaware of the lurking tragedy. In Morgan’s work, Vishniac’s subjects meet their fate: Mounds of gaunt, naked bodies obscure their faces. Hirschl’s Israeli “Cities” collages, though more hopeful, present an abstract view of the Holy Land, a crossroad of Eastern Europe and the modernized West. It is Rottenberg’s “Angst” however, a Jewish face fading onto a gray backdrop, that may best represent the sense of an uncertain Jewish future that pervades the exhibit.
Did you know that only 2% of Forward readers donate to support our nonprofit newsroom? That 2% make it possible for millions to read the Forward without a paywall or subscription — removing any barriers to the full and fair Jewish story.
But while the Forward is free to read, it isn’t free to produce. Big stories — like deep dives into the antisemitism data, political scoops or reporting trips to college campuses — take months of research and fact-checking. All while we keep you informed of what you need to know each day.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Forward Publisher & CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
