FAYE SCHULMAN
(1924- )

This exhibit is produced by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (www.jewishpartisans.org).

Born in Poland, Schulman received her first camera from her brother when she was 13. It was that camera which ultimately saved her life, and allowed her to later document Jewish partisan activity.

Schulman's rare collection of images captures the camaraderie, horror and loss, bravery and triumph of the rag-tag, tough partisans - some Jewish, some not - who fought the Germans and their collaborators.

On August 14, 1942, the Germans killed 1,850 Jews from the Lenin ghetto, including Faye's parents, sisters and younger brother. They spared only 26 people that day, including Faye for her photographic abilities. The Germans ordered Faye to develop their photographs of the massacre. Secretly she also made copies for herself.

During a partisan raid, Faye fled to the forests and joined the Molotava Brigade, a partisan group made mostly of escaped Soviet Red Army POWs. Faye took over a hundred photographs, developing the medium format negatives under blankets and making “sun prints” during the day.

"I want people to know that there was resistance. Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof." She is the only known Jewish partisan photographer.

Faye and her Jewish partisan husband immigrated to Canada in 1948.

MORE INFORMATION
Jewish Partisans Website and video of Schulman telling her story.
Faye Shulman on PBS

Faye Schulman is reunited with three Jewish partisans from Warsaw. Faye and the three men had thought that each other had been killed. Poland, 1943.

GRETA SCHREYER
(1917-2005)

Greta Schreyer was born in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of a master goldsmith. Following her father’s dreams she became a master goldsmith by the age of 18 before being forced by the Nazi occupation to emigrate to the United States in 1938.

Settling in New York City, Schreyer attempted to paint her new surroundings, but the trauma of losing both of her parents in concentration camps provoked her instead to begin painting scenes from memory of the Austrian countryside. These seven impressionistic and vivid paintings represent the woods of Eastern Europe where partisans hid from the Germans and their collaborators.

In addition, six paintings of the destruction of Russian and Polish wooden synagogues revisits the overwhelming destruction and violence in Nazi-occupied Europe. The destruction of the world of Polish Jewry, seen in the infernos of these synagogues, was part of the massive devastation that exiled her and that continues to invade our consciousness to the present.

Schreyer's work has shown widely in Europe and in New York. 

MORE INFORMATION
Greta Schreyer art listings
Art Review 2004

Wooden Synagogue, Volpa, Poland, (1991) oil on canvas by Greta Schreyer