The Jewish Transcript, Seattle, Washington. September 10, 1999. L’Shana Tova
On the cover: Tykocin synagogue – Baroque wall
By Akiva Segan
Special to the Transcript
[The article was on page 2B. On the right side of the text of the article was a black & white photo of the drawing; the cover, on the front of section B, for Rosh Ha’shanah, the Jewish New Year: a color reproduction of the artwork]
This artwork has a strong emotional bond for me, for two reasons. First, Tykocin is very near Bialystok in northeast Poland (and for those of you who were raised in cities with good Jewish bakeries, you know a bialy as the first cousin of the bagel). My grandpa Harry, who died in 1968 when I was 18, grew up in a tiny village outside of Bialystok, and while I don’t think (Oh, how regrettably so!) that I ever had a conversation with grandpa, I look back on him with great respect and nostalgia.
The second reason is that I began the drawing in November 1994 and within a week I flew from Sea-Tac to West Palm Beach, Fla., to help care for my dad as he went into his final two months of life. Knowing I’d be spending many long hours sitting in a hospital room, I brought the work with me and completed it there during that ordeal.
The wall, which I drew from a photograph in a book I bought in Poland in 1984 called Polish Jews – Art and Culture, is a remarkable one. For it has this magnificent sculpted relief archway emanating up and out toward the ceiling. While in West Palm Beach, I found a rabbi nearby who kindly examined the photo I was working from. The Hebrew writing on the wall (center left and right) contained memorial prayers for the departed.
The town of Tykocin appears in Polish Jews: The Final Chapter, written by my late Hillel rabbi, Earl Vinecour, of blessed memory, who died at a very young age in the late 1970’s*. It was Earl and a classmate of mine, photography student Chuck Fishman who is now a photographer in New York, who provided me with an interest in Poland and brought me, through their own travels, research and writing, to examine the world of my own Jewish ancestry. A few years later, I traveled to Poland and had my life changed.
People in the Seattle Jewish community are telling me now that my life will change dramatically again as I leave on my first trip to Israel in early October. I have been invited to speak and show my artwork at an international conference at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum. The art museum at Yad Vashem may also be the future home of my watercolor, ink and gouache work featured on the cover of this issue of The Jewish Transcript.
Pending a review** by the art committee of Yad Vashem’s art museum, the “Tykocin Synagogue, Poland – Baroque wall with memorial prayers” will hopefully be acquisitioned into the Yad Vashem Art Museum collection as a gift from Alexander Schwarz in memory of his beloved wife Trudi and their son. The Schwarz family are friends and and library patrons of mine at the Magnolia branch of Seattle Public Library.
Refugees from the Vienna of the Nazi Party, Trudi was sent to England in the late 1930’s she spent several years working in a private home in the countryside, unhappy but alive. Alex, through the luck of a draw, got out by the skin of his teeth. Eventually settling in Seattle, they owned a dry cleaners on Madison near Seattle University for man years and lost their only son to MS about 15 years ago. Following Trudi’s death a few years back, Alex moved back to Vienna after 60 years to be with his only living relative, a nephew and his spouse, with whom I’ll be staying for a few days on my way to Israel.
I hope a Transcript reader, an individual or perhaps a family, will donate the money to frame the artwork*** prior to my flight out in October. Any donor or donors will be acknowledged along with the Alex as benefactors of the work. To my fellow readers, I wish you all a terrific Rosh Ha’shanah, and meaningful days and weeks to follow with Yom Kippur and beyond.
Akiva Segan lives in Seattle. To contact him about this and or other artworks, call (such and such phone # or email him at - )
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P.S. notes by A. K. Segan, March 31, 2021:
*Rabbi Vinecour, age 42, died in Madrid, Spain, July 4, 1985.
An newspaper obituary.
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** & ***: The drawing was accepted into the Yad Vashem Art Museum collection as a gift from Alex Schwarz in memory of his wife Gertrude (aka Trudi), their son Ronni, and Alex’s mother, who perished at Auschwitz.
Alex kindly sent me $100.00 as an honorarium payment, along with a couple of hundred dollars to cover cost of my flying from London to Vienna, where I visited for several days prior to my departure flight onto Tel Aviv.
I offered to frame the work prior to my bringing it to the museum but they informed me they preferred it unframed (probably for- space storage reasons). The next year the Tykocin synagogue Prayer wall artwork was reproduced in color in a tribute card published by the American Friends of Yad Vashem. The tribute card is viewable in this website – go to About the Artist - BIBLIOGRAPHY – ARTICLES, REVIEWS (by various writers, reporters, art critics, etc) and scroll down to this heading: 2002. AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR YAD VASHEM. TRIBUT1E CARD (and click on those words to open a color photo of the card).
The artwork is in the ART gallery OTHER HOLOCAUST ART – 1999 (in this website).