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2010-09-13

There are only drawings left…

Ilustracja

 

A resident of Pilzno cleaning the attic of her house found a collection of drawings painted by a Jewish boy 70 years ago. The drawings present animals, plants and objects of everyday use as well as Easter eggs, Christmas tree and hearts made of honey cake which were baked on the St Casimir’s holiday. They were drawn by a eleven-year-old boy, Mechel Zweig, during art classes from September 1938 to June 1939 . Exactly 32 drawings have been found and a total number of art classes on the fourth grade was also 32. Why was a Jewish boy so interested in Christian symbols? Surely, he attended Polish school and his friends were Poles. He draw because his teacher set that task.

Jolanta, who stumbled across Mechel’s works, decided to find out something about his family. It turned out that the boy was a son of Dawid Zweig, who owed a shop on the way from Pilzno to Dębica. Jews constituted about 1/3 of the residents of Pilzno before the war. They had their own synagogues, bath, cemetery and cheder. Mostly, they were merchants and craftsmen. 90 out of 118 shops and workshops were owned by Jews. After Germany had attacked Poland, Jews were kept in the ghetto and then sent to the extermination camp in Bełżec. Only 130 people out of 863 survived. Were Mechel Zweig and his relatives among them?
 

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