Children of the Holocaust exhibit

2. Miriam, father, grand mother
Warsaw, Poland in August 1939

4. Miriam with mother
after liberation
August 1944
Szczuczyn, Belarus

5. Miriam and parents
Brooklyn, NY March 1947

7. APPEARANCE WHEN HUNG

8. ARTIST’S STATEMENT by Miriam
Brysk
I have recently published my memoir “Amidst the Shadows of
Trees”, depicting my childhood in the Lida ghetto and in the
partisans. Dealing with the pain and emotions of my own childhood
experiences led me to consider the plight of the one and a half
million Jewish children who had not survived. I thought of their
disrupted rites of passage as beloved sons and daughters of
extended Jewish families, and their ultimate and untimely deaths in
Nazi-designated killing places. The idea for a new art series began
to emerge; I would focus on depicting the children who died, in the
context of what they are likely to have experienced.
One of the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood is the
Bar/Bat Mitzvah at age thirteen. At that event, children traditionally
receive a tallis/tallit (prayer shawl) from their parents. Most of the
Jewish children who died in the Holocaust, however, were too
young to ever have had a Bar Mitzvah, or to ever have worn a tallit. I,
therefore, used the imagery of the tallit to frame each piece. Each
child is contained within his own tallit, the one he never received, as
a gift of remembrance from me. To preserve historic authenticity,
each image depicts a real child victim of the Shoah; the caption tells
the city he was from and the place where he was likely to have died.
My life, like my art, has been strongly influenced by my
childhood experiences surviving the Nazi Holocaust. My artistic
interest in the Holocaust was fueled by a visit in 2002 to the ghettos
and camps of Eastern Europe. Throughout the trip, images of my
lost family were creeping back into my consciousness, while
childhood fears reemerged as frightening nightmares. My entire
being was shaking in horror as I sobbed for my own lost family and
the six million of my people who had so inhumanely and painfully
perished. I felt a deep inner need to portray their suffering. I wanted
to express these feelings through art. This resulted in the images
portrayed in my first Holocaust art exhibit – “In a Confined Silence”,
forty pieces depicting the plight of my family and the other Jews
during the Shoah. This body of work has received rave reviews and
has been nationally exhibited in Holocaust Museums, Municipal Art
Centers and Jewish Community Centers. Three of the pieces from
this exhibit have been accepted into the permanent collection of the
Yad Vashem.
Science and art have been my life’s passions. I received my Ph.D.
in science from Columbia University. Most of my professional life
has been spent as a Professor at the University of Texas Medical
Branch in Galveston. I am a self-taught artist.

9. INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
• All the are 16" x 24", exclusive of the tzitzit, which add another
13" to the length. They are hung by a small chain which is
attached to them at the upper corners with two zekhor (Hebrew
for remember) pins obtained from the US Holocaust Museum.
There are 27 pieces in this exhibit.
• All the images are derived from authentic photographs of victims
of the Holocaust. I received photos of ten of the highlighted
children from survivors who asked me to preserve through art
the memory of their relatives who had perished. Others were
obtained from books, or from the Internet (mostly Web sites of
organizations of survivors of individual ghettos, some Holocaust
museums). In addition to the specific information printed on the
bottom of each tallit, an explanatory card provides further data
and context.
• Three of the children portrayed are from Paris, one is from
Amsterdam. The rest are from the ghettos of Eastern Europe
where the bulk of the Jews lived. Most of the children were
deported to extermination camps in Poland. Many others, in the
Soviet-occupied territories, were shot by Einsatzgruppen (mobile
killing squads).
• “Children of the Holocaust” is intended as an educational
exhibit. To my knowledge, very few traveling exhibits have been
created on the children in the Shoah. My work is totally focused
on the plight of the one and a half million Jewish children who
perished. As such, it fills a void that has long needed symbolic
remembrance.
• Thus far, the exhibit has been shown at the Hamburg Library, MI
(February-March 2008); the Holocaust Memorial Center in
Farmington Hills, MI, (April-August 2008); at the Kellogg
Community College in Battle Creek, MI (Sept-Oct 2008); and will
be exhibited at the Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center
of Central Florida in Maitland, Florida, in 2009. and at the
Holocaust Museum Houston in 2010. Yad Vashem has shown
interest in including this art in the new children’s museum it is
now planning. More information about me, and my previous
Holocaust art exhibit “In a Confined Silence” can be obtained on

10. PLACES WHERE THE CHILDREN LIVED AND DIED

63. BRYSK SOLO EXHIBITS
2010 Children of the Holocaust, Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, TX
2009 Children of the Holocaust, The Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center
of Central Florida, Maitland, FL
2008 Children of the Holocaust Kellogg Community College, Battle Creek, MI
2008 Children of the Holocaust, Holocaust Memorial Center, Farmington Hills, MI
2008 Children of the Holocaust, Hamburg Community Library, Hamburg, MI
2007 In a Confined Silence, Battle Creek Art Center, Battle Creek, MI
2007 In a Confined Silence, The Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center of
Central Florida, Maitland, FL
2006 In a Confined Silence, Plymouth Community Art Center, Plymouth, MI
2006 In a Confined Silence, Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, TX
2006 In a Confined Silence, Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center,
Miami, FL
2005 In a Confined Silence, W. K. Kellogg Foundation Gallery, Battle Creek, MI.
Exhibit in conjunction with USHM Exhibit “Life in Shadows” in Battle
Creek, MI
2005 In a Confined Silence, Alfred Berkowitz Gallery, University of Michigan,
Dearborn, MI Exhibit in conjunction with The Voice/Vision Holocaust
Oral History Archive at the UM-Dearborn Mardigian Library
2005 In a Confined Silence, Hillel Student Center, University of Cincinnati,
Cincinnati, OH
2005 Transitions, Pfizer Global Research and Development Center, Ann Arbor, MI
2004 In a Confined Silence, Janice Charach Epstein Gallery, Jewish Community
Center of Metropolitan Detroit, West Bloomfield, MI
2004 In a Confined Silence, Amster Gallery, Jewish Community Center, Ann
Arbor, MI. Sponsored by the Bobbie and Myron Levine Jewish
Community Center Cultural Art Fund
2003 Blessings, Amster Gallery, Jewish Community Center, Ann Arbor, MI
2001 Spirit, Moody Medical Gallery, Galveston, TX
GRANTS
2005 W. K. Kellogg Foundation Grant for the preparation of a travelling exhibit
for the Holocaust art series - “In a Confined Silence”
ART IN PERMANENT COLLECTIONS
2008 Three pieces from “In a Confined Silence” accepted by the Yad Vashem