Searching for Her Great-Grandfather’s Lost Pictures (The Jewish Chronicle, May 2018)

Stephen Applebaum of The Jewish Chronicle:

Searching for her great-grandfather’s lost pictures

Elizabeth Rynecki’s new film tells the story of her quest to find her great-grandfather’s works of art which captured the world of pre-war Polish Jewry

Elizabeth Rynecki grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s, surrounded by paintings by her Polish great-grandfather, Moshe Rynecki. These artefacts from a life snuffed out in the Majdanek extermination camp, haunting and evocative depictions of Jewish life, were surviving expressions of the artist’s love for the community in which he was raised, and which was swept away violently after 1939.

Almost uniquely, Moshe’s work offered visual impressions of a world that was already changing before the outbreak of war, making them historically and socially significant, and different from the work of survivors who painted suggests Elizabeth over the phone from her home in America.

Read the Rest…

Perla – A Bonus Chapter

Perla (1929)

A CHASING PORTRAITS reader recently emailed me to ask what had happened to Perla, my great-grandmother, after she brought the bundle of Rynecki paintings from Poland to her son (my Grandpa George) in Italy. Could I, she asked, please tell the rest of Perla’s story?

This simple request struck a chord with me. I’ve always felt bad that Perla disappears from the book after she delivers the surviving bundle of art to Dad and his parents in Italy. She last appears on page 96 of CHASING PORTRAITS where it is April 1947 and Perla prepared a list of Moshe’s work for the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art. I wrote, “With permission to take the art out of Poland, Perla planned a trip to Rome.”

Grandma Stella, Alex (Dad), and Perla

Perla did go to Rome. There’s a black and white photograph of Perla, Dad, and my grandmother (page 92) when she was in Italy. After her visit to Italy, she returned to Poland. I can only guess as to why she didn’t stay in Italy — she didn’t speak the language, she couldn’t find work, she missed the familiarity of Poland. The last one is a little more complex than it sounds. Clearly Perla missed Poland, but in a way she missed a Poland that for the most part had vanished. In the post-war years, Poland, and especially Warsaw, was suffering as it tried to rebuild not just physical buildings and bridges, but to reconstruct the whole fabric of a country- economic, political, and social- almost from scratch. She couldn’t really live in Warsaw itself because the city was in ruins, so for a period of time she lived in Lodz, but things there were also difficult. She relied upon CARE packages and money sent from my grandmother’s Chicago family in order to survive.

This story is very interesting to me, and in an earlier draft of the book, I wrote a chapter about Perla’s life after the war. From a narrative perspective, unfortunately, following Perla’s trajectory meant derailing the main storyline of the book, so in the interest of narrative focus I deleted it. And quite honestly, finding a good way to tell Perla’s post-war story, when I really only knew pieces of it, was a struggle. But I do know the broad outlines of Perla’s story, and given reader curiosity, now seems like a good time to share what I know.

If you’ll recall, Dad and his parents left Italy and arrived in Texas in late 1949. They first lived with extended family in Denison, and later in Dallas. After two years, Grandpa George grew antsy. He greatly appreciated all the Texas family had provided – a place to land in America, a job, and family support when there were so little of it left in the world – but he never felt like Texas was where he belonged. I don’t know exactly when he made the decision to “Go West” to California, but interestingly enough Grandma moved out first, taking a train to San Francisco and securing a job making hats. Dad and Grandpa George moved a bit later, driving to California with all their personal belongings. I assume the Rynecki paintings were in the trunk of the car, but Dad doesn’t remember. Upon arriving in California, the family briefly settled into an apartment in San Francisco. Within a couple of years, the family moved north when Grandpa George secured a job working for a scrap metal business in Eureka, California. Eventually, he saved up and bought the business.

While Grandpa George worked to gain his financial footing, he also tried to sort out how to bring Perla to California. I don’t know if she wanted to leave Poland or if Grandpa George simply wanted her closer, so he could help her out. In July 1953 (about four years after Dad and his parents arrived in the United States) Grandpa George received a letter from the San Francisco Committee for Service to Emigres that his mother was entitled to consideration under section 3(c) of the Displaced Persons Act to come to the United States. In February 1954 Perla’s quota number was called and in March she left Europe aboard the SS American bound for New York City. Grandpa George hoped she would fly from New York to California, but Perla insisted on taking the train. On April 2, 1954, Perla arrived in Oakland, California, by train in, as the Western Union telegram reported, an “overland roomette.”

Perla was about 72 years old when she arrived in California. I wish I knew what she thought about leaving Europe, or her first impressions of America, but all I have are my educated guesses. What I can surmise is that to leave behind everything she knew, even though the war destroyed so much, must have been incredibly difficult, especially for a woman in her seventies. Although I’m not certain, it’s very unlikely that she spoke any English when she arrived, and certainly adapting to American customs must have felt like a struggle. I assume Grandpa George was excited to bring his mother to the United States, but nervous about the added financial responsibility of taking care of her. My grandmother probably had mixed feelings about her mother-in-law’s arrival as it would certainly make further demands upon her. Dad was eighteen when Perla arrived. He had been in America for five years, and while he has never told me much of anything about his relationship with his grandmother, I’m guessing that as a teenager, he didn’t devote as much time to her as she might have liked. It’s not hard to imagine that generational and cultural differences made things difficult for everyone. When pressed for memories, Dad recalls only that Perla once told him that life in Eureka was an “eat and sleep” existence. The implication was that she was bored and didn’t much like the lifestyle.

Perla and Grandpa George

Perla eventually decided to leave California and move to France where she had family. I don’t know if there was some precipitating event: a disagreement, the shock of experiencing her first earthquake (just eight months after her arrival, there was a 6.5 earthquake centered in Eureka), or if she simply decided that life in America wasn’t for her. I also don’t know exactly when she left Eureka, but when she did go (with some Rynecki paintings), she went to live with cousins in Le Mans, France. She stayed with them until they could no longer take care of her and then she was placed in a long-term care medical facility.

Perla’s life is largely a mystery to me both because I never met her and because I never heard Grandpa George speak of her. She, on the other hand, did know about me. In September 1969, just one month after my birth, Perla wrote a letter which mentioned me. I translated only a small portion of the letter written in Polish, in part because of my unfamiliarity with Polish letter combinations, but also because her loopy handwriting is tough for me to decipher. Despite the challenges, one phrase stood out. Perla wrote: “całusy dla Elisabeth Bella,” which translates to, “kisses for Elisabeth Bella.” Perhaps it’s overly sentimental of me, but when I first translated this phrase, I cried.

That Perla was able to write a letter sending me kisses is rather remarkable when you realize she wrote the letter from a nursing home which reported her mental health as “not good.” Federation Des Societes Juives De France, the facility she lived in at the time of my birth, felt her situation had so deteriorated that they were no longer equipped to handle her medical needs. They told Grandpa George, “unfortunately, due to her mental state she needs permanent help to attend to her, which we cannot provide.”

Perla

While I like to think my birth provided Perla a ray of sunshine in a very difficult and depressing time, she was not well and her son, many thousands of miles away, fretted about her. Unfortunately, Grandpa George’s own health was not great, and he was unable to travel to France to be by her side. Instead he wrote many letters to the institutions caring for her, asking for information about her physical and mental well-being. The news was not good. About the same time that I turned one, Chateau De Villeniard, the private nursing home where she lived, wrote: “She is a person who is often very restless and with a very sad past. Some people have had to suffer atrociously from it. Her agitation appears sometimes also at night, her physical condition is not bad, but her mind is very feeble. She does not seem to suffer from not having any visits, she lives in a dream and fortunately does not miss her beloved ones.”

Perla clearly suffered from traumatic wartime memories. Today therapists might be able to better treat what I can only assume was some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder potentially along with dementia as she aged, but even now these can be very difficult to manage, much less treat effectively. There was probably little her caretakers could do to help ease her mental trauma. She simply did what others in her generation and situation had to do; she endured. On May 6, 1971, at 10 o’clock in the morning, she died. Chateau De Villeniard informed Grandpa George that in the end Perla was quite senile and traumatized by the events of the war, and that she suffered. They wrote, “I think her physical and mental state was much degraded, since she could not eat alone, nor could she dress herself; she was even incontinent, and one could only wish the delivery of this poor human being, who has suffered so much.”

Grandpa George felt incredible guilt at not being by his mother’s side in her final days. In the letters he wrote to Chateau De Villeniard after her death he was very concerned with making sure she received a proper burial and that a tombstone mark her grave. He was assured she was properly buried in the Vaux S/Lunain cemetery. Grandpa George designed the tombstone himself. Someday I hope to journey to Le Mans to visit her grave to pay my respects.

Grandpa George’s sketch. Mittelsbach was her maiden name. Rynecka is the Polish feminine form of Rynecki

 

 

Film Festival Screening News

 

What’s the best email a filmmaker can get from a festival director?

One that says:

CONGRATULATIONS!

CHASING PORTRAITS will premiere at the 14th Jewish Motifs International Film Festival in Warsaw, Poland. Tickets are free. I **believe** CHASING PORTRAITS will screen the evening of May 26th, but this is not yet confirmed.

May 23-27, 2018

 

In August, CHASING PORTRAITS will screen at the 2018 Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival. No specific screening dates have been set at this time.

August 7-12, 2018

 

Stay tuned for more festival news as it rolls into my inbox.
Please check out the EVENTS page on my website for up-to-date information!

 

Film Festivals

We’re in the process of submitting CHASING PORTRAITS to film festivals across the United States (and internationally too!). Please stay tuned for official festival screenings!

In the meantime, I thought you  might enjoy seeing these two film stills:

CHASING PORTRAITS film poster

The CapRadio Reads Interview

In November, Capital Public Radio’s Donna Apidone interviewed me in front of a live audience about my great-grandfather’s art, the CHASING PORTRAITS book, and the forthcoming documentary film. The interview is now available online. Listen Here.

Podcast Interview at the Deerfield (IL) Public Library

“On this episode of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast, we had the great pleasure of talking to Elizabeth Rynecki, author of Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter’s Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy. We discussed her amazing, decades-long project to find the missing paintings of her great-grandfather, Moshe Rynecki, who painted scenes of Polish-Jewish life in the interwar years. At the start of World War II, Moshe Rynecki hid his life’s work with family friends, and was later murdered at the Majdanek concentration camp. While some paintings were recovered after the war, many remained (and still remain) lost.

Elizabeth’s memoir and forthcoming documentary, also titled Chasing Portraits, trace her story of discovery and meditate on the legacy of World War II and survivorship. Learn more and see Moshe Rynecki’s paintings at chasingportraits.org while you listen to our conversation.

You can check out Chasing Portraits from the library or find other books and movies mentioned in our conversation here.”

The Chasing Portraits Book Tour Continues…IL, WI, CO

The Chasing Portraits book tour continues in Deerfield (IL), Appleton (WI), and Denver (CO)…

October 8, 2017 (2-3:30pm)
Deerfield Public Library
(920 N. Waukegan Rd., Deerfield, IL)

October 9, 2017 (6:30-7:30pm)
Fox Cities Book Festival
Appleton Public Library
(225 N. Oneida St. Appleton, WI)

October 15, 2017 (4pm)
Fred Marcus Memorial Holocaust Lecture
Elaine Wolf Theatre, MACC at the JCC
(350 S. Dahlia St. Denver, CO 80246)
Tickets are $18

Pierze Puch – Down Feathers

 

In 1929 my great-grandfather, Moshe Rynecki (1881-1943), painted this painting in Warsaw, Poland. I know this because the painting (it’s untitled, but contains the image of the goose with the words, Pierze Puch, which means Down Feathers, thus the blog post title) is dated in the lower left hand corner along with the Polish spelling of the city: Warszawa. My family once had possession of this painting, but no longer knows its whereabouts.

If you’re not entirely familiar with my family’s story, here’s the brief synopsis:

My great-grandfather was a prolific Warsaw based artist who painted scenes of the Polish Jewish community in the interwar years. In the early days of the Second World War he became concerned about his body of work and made the decision to divide his paintings, sketches, and notebooks into bundles, which he then hid with friends and acquaintances in and around the city of Warsaw. He then went into the Warsaw Ghetto and was eventually deported to Majdanek, the Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where he perished. My Dad (who was not quite 3 when the war started) and his parents survived the war on false papers. After the war, (please read Chasing Portraits to learn the longer story), Moshe’s widow recovered a small percentage of the hidden paintings. Trying to leave behind the destruction and horrible memories of the war, Dad and his parents moved to Italy. In Rome, they made photographs of a number of surviving paintings. This was one of the photographs that they made. Unfortunately, while we have this photo, my family no longer has the painting, and I don’t know who has it.

In 2008 I began work on a documentary film (currently in post-production) about my quest for my great-grandfather’s lost paintings, and produced a 9-minute “proof of concept” trailer. The trailer contains this photograph. This is important to explain because it’s not online elsewhere and I was recently contacted by Elly (Eliezer) Trepman (he’s researching information about the street where his father grew up), who spotted the image in the trailer and thought it was along the street he’s researching.

The painting seems to be slightly north of the Rynkowa-Krochmalna intersection. The building on the left, next to the men with the lulav (the closed frond of the date palm tree used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot), is probably Rynkowa 11. The round building on the right with the arches, across the street, is probably the market building Wielopole (Gościnny Dwór).

Wielopole (Gościnny_Dwór)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additionally, while the goose down icon (Pierze Puch) was probably fairly common in Poland, there were, in fact, two such signs on Rynkowa Street; a square one at Rynkowa 11 and a round one just two houses south, at Rynkowa 7. While these photographs from Yad Vashem’s digital collection were taken from the other side of the goose sign, facing south, they are along the same street.

Yad Vashem. Archival signature: 1406_85

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yad Vashem. Archival signature: 1406_78

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, it appears that the Rynecki painting also includes the front columns of Lubomirski Palace.

Lubomirski Palace, Warsaw

 

 

 

 

 

 

To help point out these features in the Rynecki painting, I’ve marked up this image (click on the photograph to enlarge it).

An aerial image with the various components discussed above, labeled here for purposes of better understanding the street geography.

1935 aerial image labelled by Elly Trepman Aerial Image via mapa.um.warszawa.pl

I am, once again, reminded that I never know how, or when, or in what manner I will receive new clues about my great-grandfather’s life and body of work. My project is titled Chasing Portraits for many reasons, but one of the themes that seems to intrigue people the most is the idea of chasing down details and fragments of general history and of history specific to my family. I am grateful to all who provide clues and details that allow me to better understand my great-grandfather and his art. Thank you for being part of the journey.

 

Q&A with Swenson Book Development

Below is an excerpt from an interview with Trace Sonnleitner at Swenson Book Development about Chasing Portraits, family memories, research, writing, and the documentary film:

Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter’s Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy by Elizabeth Rynecki, is the story of her search for the art of her great-grandfather, which disappeared after he was killed in the Majdanek concentration camp. Moshe Rynecki’s body of work reached close to eight hundred paintings and sculptures, which he created between the First and Second World Wars in Warsaw, Poland. Recently, I interviewed her about her research, writing the book, and working on the documentary film.

Trace Sonnleitner: The interactions you portray between Moshe and his parents, and between you and your parents, and grandparents, remind me of some generational differences in my own family. When I ask them questions about their past they are usually answered with quickly worded stories that make me laugh, or draw out my sympathetic emotions. Did you intentionally display these generational differences in your own family?

Elizabeth Rynecki: My goal was to tell the story of my great-grandfather’s art, but it quickly became clear that each generation—the artist, his father, his son, my Dad, and I—had very different relationships to the art. My great-grandfather, the artist, felt an incredible compulsion to paint. His son, my Grandpa George, understood the historical importance of his father’s work, especially in light of his death in the Holocaust. Dad understood his father’s love of the art and asked me to build a website to make the art more accessible to others.

I have taken Dad’s initial steps and pushed an even more expansive view—to uncover details about the past so audiences might better appreciate and understand the history of the collection. Each generation’s expertise played a slightly different role in shaping how the next generation would experience and make sense of the art and its history.

[Read the rest of the interview on Swenson Book Development’s Blog]