FRAGMENT FROM BIRTHRIGHTS LEFT BEHIND
2000
Etching and Monotype
Edition 1/1
Framed 33” x 26”
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Before the war, Robert and Ilse Abraham lived in Pyritz, Pomerania, a very small agricultural town not far from Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland). Robert owned a grain business with his brother as well as other properties including grain warehouses and stables. With the onset of WWll and Nazi occupation, his brother’s family fled to Shanghai. As late as 1939, Ilse’s sister Gerda, along with her husband Ernest and son Wolfgang left for Bolivia. Robert and Ilse were less fortunate; by 1938 Robert was forced to sell his properties and business to the Nazi’s at a very low price and the family left Pyritz, and moved into an apartment in Berlin. Their children Lili and Gerd, went to a Jewish school as no other educational opportunities were permitted. Robert and Ilse were forced to make the heart wrenching decision to arrange for the children to be placed on a Kindertransport to England.
“Robert and Ilse died in the Holocaust, but through their children’s children, traces of them live on.”
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