A Survivor’s Daughter Finds a Trove of Letters that Inspires Art

The Fellowship  |  May 6, 2019

Shulamit Kopf’s new solo exhibition, “Moscow to Berlin,” will feature artwork inspired by her mother’s experiences in World War II, and is set to open June 22 in Krakow reports the Times of Israel:

Another of Kopf’s paintings is a map of Poland and Germany with a route in red tracing her mother’s journey from Moscow to Berlin and back to Poland to find her family. Yet another has pieces of ripped postcards, telling of her mother’s travels and escapes from one place to another.

Her parents and brother never imagined things were so bad for their Polish relatives, wrote her father in a letter to his daughter. Letters came back addressed “unknown” from all the towns where relatives had lived.

But their own letters to one another survived.

“Our family doesn’t throw anything away,” said Kopf. “They saved her letters, she saved their letters. Grandfather’s university diploma, his calling card as an advocate from before the war, through all the craziness and moving continents and moving houses, all these documents were preserved” in a few drawers in Kopf’s mother’s bedroom.