Photo courtesy of Jewish Museum Milwaukee
When the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz, a Russian officer, a female physician, found a diary in the rubble of the crematorium. The author, a teenage girl named Rywka Lipszyc, had been locked inside the Łódź Ghetto along with the Polish city’s other Jews. Seventy years later, her journal was translated and published as The Diary of Rywka Lipszyc. The journal is also the subject of a documentary film-in-progress and is the heart of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, “The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka in the Łódź Ghetto.”
Not unlike the best-known Holocaust journal, The Diary of Anne Frank, Lipszyc’s account is “a very compelling story,” says Molly Dubin, the Jewish Museum’s curator. “She was writing at a maturity level well beyond her years. She was forced to mature very quickly, facing circumstances most children never have to address. Her diary was not just a coming of age story set against the backdrop of atrocity.”
Originating at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, “The Girl in the Diary” has never been seen before in the U.S. The exhibit is spread across three of the Jewish Museum’s galleries. At the entrance, the Łódź Ghetto is described through text and visual panels. Similarly, the final section displays the discovery, survival and translation of Lipszyc’s diary through wall panels, adding an interactive table allowing viewers to call up additional information.
The core of “The Girl in the Diary” is an expansive interactive light table featuring facsimile pages from the diary, closely written (in Polish) in Lipszyc’s beautiful penmanship. By swiping and touching, viewers can summon excerpts of the diary (in English) and commentary by scholars. Projected onto the walls are large-scale black-and-white photographs of the Łódź Ghetto taken by a pair of Jewish captives, Henryk Ross and Mendel Grossman, as well as a Nazi who worked as the ghetto’s chief accountant. The three men were tasked with documenting the ghetto. Their photos show pensive faces staring through fences—but also smiling children getting on with life as best they could. The Nazi photographer forced his exhausted subjects to pose at the workbenches.
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Ross also took pictures surreptitiously in between his official task as a documentarian. As the Nazis were evacuating in the face of advancing Soviet armies, Ross buried thousands of photographs and negatives in a box. Many have survived and are part of the historical record. Ross moved to Israel and testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann.
Nestled inside compartments of the light table are artifacts from the Łódź Ghetto, where Jews toiled under harsh conditions in Nazi workshops. Among the items are baby shoes made by Jewish children, a straw basket, a carved wooden box and the metal pin of the sewing department where Lipszyc worked as a seamstress. Excerpts from Yoav Potash’s documentary film, Diary From the Ashes, will be screened.
It was once believed that Lipszyc died following a forced march from Poland and across Germany to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the last months of World War II. But digital technology allowing worldwide access to archives formerly closed and scattered have added at least a few months to her life. Her presence was recorded at hospitals through the summer of 1945, and she was issued a Displaced Person’s ID card. On it, she specified Palestine as her desired destination. Records of her arrival there, however, have not surfaced.
Through May 17 at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, 1360 N. Prospect Ave. For more information, call 414-390-5730 or visit jewishmuseummilwaukee.org.
Visual Arts Preview: Jan. 23-29, 2020
10th Annual Winter Carnival Saturday, Jan. 25 Lynden Sculpture Garden 2145 W. Brown Deer Road
Lynden welcomes winter with a day of outdoor art-making, studio activities, scavenger hunts, tours and tree-walks, as well as whatever other winter activities—ice skating, painting the pond, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing—the weather on Saturday permits. Orchestrated by Michael Lagerman, this highly participatory, artist-driven, Lynden “Family Free Day” carnival offers something for everybody and features a large-scale land art project from artist Richard Shilling. For more information, call 414-446-8794 or visit lyndensculpturegarden.org/carnival.
“Bye for Now: Work by Portrait Photographer Isaac Harris” Saturday, Jan. 25 VarWest Gallery 423 W. Pierce St.
Without a studio environment and often spending no more than 30 seconds with any given individual, Harris captures the closeness and raw emotion within the human persona. As he says about capturing this moment: “You are getting that person in all their truth. There is no time to be a different person.” In these brief moments of photographing someone, the stranger becomes a friend. “Bye For Now,” a solo exhibition featuring portrait photographer Isaac Harris, includes candid portraits of people in cities such as Berlin, New York and Paris, acting as a retrospective, as well as a capstone, representing the past eight years of his career. For more information, visit varwestgallery.com.
2020 Wisconsin Artists Biennial Jan. 25-March 29 Museum of Wisconsin Art 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend
Every two years, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) showcases some of the most compelling art from a state rich in creative capital. This year’s event recognizes emerging and established Wisconsin artists who are pushing the boundaries of the ideas that shape society. MOWA’s 2020 Biennial not only exhibits the art, it awards a total of $10,000 in cash; the first-place prize winner receives $5,000 and a solo exhibition at MOWA. It features 42 works by 39 artists, representing a wide spectrum of media and diverse perspectives from throughout the Badger State. For more information, call 262-334-9638 or visit wisconsinart.org.
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