To Paint is to Live: Erich Lichtblau-Leskly

May 2, 2019, 7:45 pm - 9:00 pm
Westchester Jewish Center
175 Rockland Avenue
Mamaroneck, New York 10543

Add to iCal | Add to Google Calendar

GALLERY OPENING PROGRAM & RECEPTION

To Paint is to Live: Erich Lichtblau-Leskly
WJC Lobby • Thursday, May 2, 2019 • 7:45PM
Please join us for a gallery talk and reception. Wine, cheese, and desserts will be served.

Turning to humor as a tool for coping and resistance in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czech painter Erich Lichtblau-Leskly sketched inmates’ efforts to maintain dignity and hold onto their humanity. He satirized their self-preserving behaviors on scraps of paper he found in the ghetto. Fearing discovery and punishment, he and his wife, Elsa, cut them up and hid them in their barracks. The two survived the war and, after liberation, retrieved them. Later, after they emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Israel, Leskly repainted the scenes using the repaired drawings as inspiration. The exhibition offers these pairs and provides commentary from our lending institution, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.