Holocaust survivor Seymour Kaftan has created a substantial body of oil paintings depicting the Nazi brutalities that took place in Lithuania when he was a young teenager. The exhibit, entitled Genocide among the Flowers: Seymour Kaftan’s Ponary Paintings will open at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College on Tuesday, February 16, 2010, at 7:00PM. The exhibit will run through June 15, 2010.
Mr. Kaftan, who came to America after World War II, was driven to tell of his terrible experiences, but because of his inability to master the English language, he painted his story. The exhibit of Kaftan’s paintings, curated by Rabbi Isidoro Aizenberg, Scholar-in-Residence, will be accompanied by excerpts from the Ponary Diary, a chronicle of the atrocities, written by Kazimierz Sakowitz, a Pole who lived in the woods near the murder grounds.
Stored in the basement of his daughter’s home in Baltimore, Maryland, Mr. Kaftan’s paintings were unwrapped only once each year to be shown at the local Hebrew day school on Yom Hashoah.
“The powerful combination of images, text and photographs offer a rare perspective into this very dark period of history,” says Arthur Flug, Executive Director, Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives. “We are very grateful to his family for generously donating this collection to the Kupferberg Holocaust Center.”
Please visit www.qcc.cuny.edu, or call 718-281-5770 for more information.