‘Paint What You See’. Drawings from Terazin

Helga Hoškova -Weissova is one of the few children, who survived Terazin.  She was born on 10^th November 1929 in Prague. She was joined to the first transport to Terazin along with her parents. There, she spent three years of her life. Later, she was deported to the camps in Oświęcim, Freiberg and Mauthausen. In May 1945 she regained her freedom.

After the war, she went  to Paris with her mother. The father didn’t survive. She graduated from the Academy of Industrial Design and became a painter. Today, her works are renowned worldwide.  However, her passion for art was born much earlier, during her stay in the Terazin ghetto.

‘Paint what you see’, said her father, when she smuggled a drawing of children making a snowman to men’s barracks. It was December 1941, not long after coming to Terazin. The snowman, in fact, was her last child’s drawing. Her father’s advice, and her subsequent experience, brought to her a sense of mission to capture everyday life of the ghetto in her paintings.

Helga Hošková-Weissová  brought with her to Terazin a drawing paper, a box of acrylic paints, pastels and pencils, which were sufficient enough for the entire three years. The first pictures were created on good quality paper. Then, she painted on everything what she could get her hands on. In Terazin, she created approximately a hundred paintings. The girl’s diary, together with her illustrations survived, walled up by her uncle in a hiding place in Terazin barracks.

The exhibition in the Galicia Jewish Museum shows the remaining  part of her work, completed by a selection of her later pencil drawings.

Special thanks toHelga Hoškova -Weissova for lending her works.