Son honors legacy of Twin Cities artist who survived the Holocaust in new exhibit
Holocaust Remembrance Day begins on Wednesday night in the Hebrew Calendar. It's being observed around the world, as well as in Minnesota.
In St. Paul, a special art gallery is open featuring hundreds of works by Holocaust survivor Lucy Kreisler Smith, who immigrated to the Twin Cities after the war.
Smith died three years ago but her son, Daniel Smith, hopes her art keeps her legacy alive forever.
"With my mom, there's a triumph," Daniel Smith said.
He admits he didn't have the greatest relationship with his mother, but his curating and opening the special gallery by himself is an act of love and gratitude.
"I mean, mostly I just see a person that really wanted to be heard," he said. "Her use of color, and I'm not an art expert, but her use of color is really outstanding and interesting. And some of them, you can see even thicker dollops of paint. You know, she was going for texture, too."
Lucy Kreisler Smith
Daniel Smith
Lucy Kreisler Smith was born Lilka Kreisler in Poland in 1933. The Nazis evicted her family to the Krakow ghetto when she was 6. Most of her relatives were murdered in death camps, but her father helped her and her mother survive by forging baptism records and posing as a runaway Catholic family.
She'd go from Poland to Paris and then the U.S., taking art classes along the way. She settled in St. Paul in the 1970s, and her drawing, painting and sewing never stopped until her death at age 89.
Her son says this gallery isn't exactly organized, with most of the art untitled and undated, but he did group some works together, which he calls "fantastical."
"This is just from her dreams," he said. "The effect of the Holocaust, the dreams, the nightmares, things in the back of her head, I see those here. I see those here. The monsters. You know, that's what I see in some of this work, and I say that's some of her Holocaust paintings, too."
But amid the darkness, there was always light.
"Yes there's hope. Look what happened. She went through a Holocaust and did all this," he said. "So yeah, there's hope."
Her first-person testimonies are recorded at the University of Minnesota and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
The Gallery is in the Vandalia Tower in St. Paul is open daily through Saturday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
13 hours ago
- Boston Globe
‘Our Class' expands across the decades to confront a historic evil
'Our Class' introduces 10 twentysomethings — five Catholics and five Jews — who have gone to school together since they were 5, and then follows them from the 1930s to 2000. The show focuses on the impact of one pivotal incident in their lives, when several hundred Jews in their town were rounded up and deliberately burned to death in a barn. For many decades, the Poles blamed the Nazis, denying responsibility for murdering their friends and neighbors. 'I went to the site where the barn stood outside the town of Jedwabne,' Golyak says. 'It's a beautiful, peaceful landscape. You almost feel you are in the presence of God. And then to know something so tragic happened here, it makes you realize how easy it is for people to shift from a gray area of humanity to super dark and violent.' Advertisement As events spiral out of control, the play includes the seemingly unimportant details, such as a neighbor offering advice to a new mom on how to treat her son's colic — even holding him tenderly and suggesting a simple remedy — before sending both mother and child to their death. Director Igor Golyak during rehearsal. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff 'We can't take in the horror unless we see the mundane details of their lives and recognize these people as longtime friends who fall in love, gossip together, tease each other,' says Golyak. 'Growing up together, these young people are bound together by their years together in school,' he says. 'If these people can do such an awful thing, we are all capable of doing something horrible.' Inside Arlekin's modest rehearsal and performance space in Needham, Golyak's actors and production team — who hail from New York, Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Germany, and the Boston area — walk through some of the play's toughest scenes. In Golyak's inventive and always-engaging approach, high-tech tools, like images projected on a chalkboard backdrop, mix with low-tech props, like balloons on which the characters draw faces before letting the balloons go and watching them float away. In the midst of a suspenseful scene in which people are being herded together, two characters perform a graceful, slow-motion dance. Advertisement 'The ritualized Jewish dance brings a kind of beauty and joy to a horrifying moment,' says Richard Topol, who is reprising his role in 'Our Class' after the New York performances. Boston audiences may know him best from his current TV series, 'Godfather of Harlem,' as well as his appearance in the Huntington's 2019 remounting of the Tony award-winning 'Indecent.' 'I play Abram,' Topol says, 'who was the classmate who moved away as a teenager to become a rabbi. He writes to his friends, and misses them, but he never sees them again.' Abram serves as a kind of narrator, and Topol says Golyak's vision 'creates a kind of magic that lifts us up between two worlds, allowing us to be distant and then close to the action.' Chulpan Khamatova during rehearsal for "Our Class." Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff Chulpan Khamatova, a renowned Russian film and theater actress who now lives in exile in Latvia, says the trauma and pain the survivors experienced led to a numbing denial. Khamatova plays Rachelka, a young woman who is saved by a classmate, but must convert to Catholicism to survive. 'She dies two times,' says Khamatova. 'First when she loses her entire family, and then when she decides to hide the truth — about her true identity and about who is responsible for the atrocity.' 'It's fascinating to see how long a common lie could last,' says Boston-based actor Deborah Martin, who plays Zoha, a woman who saves some of her classmates, but finds that brave choice forces her into impossible situations. 'I have to look my friend in the eye and tell her I can't save her baby,' she says. 'It's harrowing.' At one point, one character says to another, 'We are classmates. We are like family, better than family,' which makes their actions even more incomprehensible. Advertisement 'I am like a narrator,' says Topol. 'I'm tasked with retelling the story, so that we don't forget.' New Works Festival runs June 26-29 Moonbox Productions Fourth Annual Boston New Works Festival will feature three full productions of new plays and four readings June 26-29 at the Calderwood Pavilion and the Boston Center for the Arts. Full productions include 'Fangirl,' by Luna Abréu-Santana; 'Guts,' by Rachel Greene; and 'Mox Nox,' by Patrick Gabridge. Readings include 'Choose and Celebrate,' by Catherine Giorgetti; 'Creature Feature, ' by Micah Pflaum; 'Hitch,' by James McLindon; and 'How to Kill a Goat,' by Mireya Sánchez-Maes. OUR CLASS By Tadeusz Slobodzianek, adapted by Norman Allen. Presented by Arlekin Players Theater, at the Calderwood Pavilion in the Boston Center for the Arts June 13-23. Tickets: $84-$124.
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
How to watch Pope Leo's Chicago celebration: Start time, date, more
How to watch Pope Leo's Chicago celebration: Start time, date, more Show Caption Hide Caption Pope Leo XIV hugs his brother after inaugural mass Pope Leo XIV embraced and chatted with his older brother after finishing his inauguration mass in Vatican City. Just weeks after the election of Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago native is set to be celebrated across the world right from his North American hometown. According to the Archdiocese of Chicago's website, the event, set to to honor Pope Leo XIV − formerly Robert Francis Prevost − is slated for June 14 at Rate Field, home to the Chicago White Sox. The Catholic leader, ordained in 1981 as a member of the Order of Saint Augustine, was elected pope on May 8 to succeed Pope Francis, who died in April of a stroke and heart failure, according to a death certificate written by a Vatican doctor released in late April. Here's what to know about Pope Leo XIV's speech, what time it starts and how to watch it. Pope Leo XIV receives Villanova hat during meeting, reps alma mater at Vatican Where is Pope Leo's celebration? Although he is not expected to attend the celebration, The Archdiocese of Chicago reported it is set to take place on June 14 at Rate Field in Chicago. The baseball stadium is home of the Chicago White Sox. Streaming guide: Deals, bundles and free trials on Disney+, Peacock, Sling TV What time is Pope Leo's celebration? Gates to the stadium are set to open at 12:30 p.m. CT., according to The Archdiocese of Chicago's website. The program kicks off at 2:30 p.m. followed by Mass at 4 p.m. (also both CT). How to watch Pope Leo's celebration: Pope Leo's celebration will be livestreamed on the The Archdiocese of Chicago's website. It can also be viewed on YouTube. How to get tickets to the Pope Leo event Tickets for the event cost $5, according to The Archdiocese of Chicago's website. Contributing: Fernando Cervantes Jr. Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@ and follow her on X @nataliealund.
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
The Farewell Tour may be over, but Paul Simon is taking the stage again
'I love you!' someone shouted from the back of the orchestra seating. 'I love you more!' another fan responded. Simon's 'quiet celebration' was aptly named in more ways than one. He opened with a complete, 33-minute run-through of the 'Seven Psalms' record, with hushed, pristine songs that reckoned with age, spirituality, and meaning. Black and white title cards displayed the names of each song in the movement. At one point a sound like the sanctus bells of the Catholic church glistened. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Are we all just trial and error?' Simon sang on 'Sacred Harp.' At this point in his life, his voice is wispy, yet it's still somehow boyish. On Tuesday, he hit all the notes he reached for. Advertisement Paul Simon performs at the Boch Center Wang Theatre. Ben Stas for The Boston Globe/The Boston Globe If Simon's opening appearance with Advertisement The band featured several multi-instrumentalists, adding flute, cello, various percussive effects and more to the arrangements. Guitarists Mark Stewart and Gyan Riley embellished on Simon's foundations. After a brief intermission, the band returned with two more members, including the South African bassist Bakithi Kumalo, who played on Simon's groundbreaking 'Graceland' album (1986). The title track kicked off the second set, with Simon's voice decidedly forward in the mix. Later, the band played that album's 'Under African Skies' (dedicated to Joseph Shabalala,the founder of That song featured a special guest appearance from the singer Edie Brickell, Simon's wife. 'She'll undoubtedly vastly improve the performance,' he said by way of introduction. Some fans who showed up hoping to hear the greatest hits of Simon & Garfunkel may have left quietly disappointed, but for anyone attuned to Simon's long solo career, the show was a small miracle of precision and fidelity. On 'Slip Slidin' Away' (the lyrics of which – 'the nearer your destination…' – seemed especially poignant), the drum brushes were distinctly audible. The set included a couple of songs from 'The Rhythm of the Saints' (1990) the Brazil-centered follow-up to 'Graceland,' and several 'deep cuts,' as Simon said. Three were from his 1983 album 'Hearts and Bones,' including 'Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War' ('This will be my first Surrealist Number One Hit,' he recalled joking to himself) and 'The Late Great Johnny Ace.' The latter ended with a photographic triptych of the icons that inspired it – John Lennon, JFK, and the tragic singer named in the title. Advertisement Midway through, Simon teased the crowd with the familiar guitar motifs he wrote for several Simon & Garfunkel songs, such as 'I Am a Rock,' before actually leading the band into a thoroughly reinvented version of 'Homeward Bound,' set to a shuffling beat. The band went out on a high note with the festive 'Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,' punctuated by the 'laughing' sound of the Brazilian cuica and Brickell materializing onstage to nail the whistling part. After carrying off the flowers he accepted from a fan in the front row, Simon returned to lead the musicians on a lightly jazzy/funky '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,' so very much of its 1975 vintage, and a vaguely Mexican-flavored version of 'The Boxer,' which featured a wonderful solo from Riley (son of the minimalist composer Terry Riley).' On that song's 'lie-la-lie' melody, the audience heartily joined in. Then Simon wrapped up the evening with a solo rendition of 'The Sound of Silence.' 'And the vision that was planted in my brain,' he sang softly, 'still remains.' PAUL SIMON At the Wang Theatre, June 10 James Sullivan can be reached at .
