I post these painting for Holocaust Remembrance Day 2010.
The Ponary massacre (or Paneriai massacre) was the mass-murder of 100,000 people, mostly Jews, by German SD, SS and Lithuanian Nazi[1][2][3][4] Sonderkommando collaborators (Special SD and German Security Police Squad "Ypatingasis būrys" units)[1][2][5] during World War II and the Holocaust in Reichskommissariat Ostland. The executions took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station of Paneriai (Polish: Ponary), now a suburb of Vilnius. Some 70,000 Jews were murdered in Ponary,[6] along with estimated 20,000 Poles and 8,000 Russians, many from nearby Vilnius.
(I photographed the paintings without a flash. I tried to avoid the shine of the overhead lighting)
Seymour Kaftan signed his paintings using his Yiddish name "Szepsel." There are many more paintings in this collection. They are in exhibit at the new Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College, Bayside, Queens, N.Y.
"There are roads leading to Ponary - but there are no roads back."
~Kazimierz Sakowicz
Seymour Kaftan signed his paintings using his Yiddish name "Szepsel." There are many more paintings in this collection. They are in exhibit at the new Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College, Bayside, Queens, N.Y.
"There are roads leading to Ponary - but there are no roads back."
~Kazimierz Sakowicz
