Page 50 - Holyland Magazine - 2019 Edition
P. 50
A Journey of
Inspiration:
Holocaust Remembrance
at Yad Vashem
By Sari Granitza
“Has the like of this happened in your days family. He was a prodigiously creative child,
or in the days of your fathers? Tell your dreaming of far-off worlds and recording
children about it, and let your children many adventures in his writings and artwork.
tell theirs, and their children the next At the tender age of 14, Petr was torn from
generation!” (Joel 1: 2-3) his loving family and deported to the Terezin
(Theresienstadt) ghetto. Surrounded by fear
For centuries, Jewish tradition and and death, suffering and uncertainty, he
history has been passed down nevertheless continued to create, read, write
through the generations propelled by and draw.
the biblical commandment Zachor –
“Remember.” The Holocaust, and our Petr’s vivid imagination provided him an
need to commemorate the six million Jewish “escape” from his incarceration. Despite
men, women and children murdered in this the harsh conditions of the ghetto, where
devastating chapter of human history, is no people often lost all hope, Petr dreamt of
different. We must recall the stories of the “traveling” to places near and far – including
lives of the Jews of Europe and North Africa outer space. His drawing Moon Landscape,
whom the Nazis and their collaborators which is on display in the Holocaust History
not only attempted to destroy, but also to Museum at Yad Vashem, reflects, with
eradicate all memory of their existence. remarkable accuracy, how Petr believed the
earth would look from the moon, imagined
Jewish history is a long chain of links, and Petr Ginz׳s Moon Landscape. Above: Astronaut as a place of safety far from his suffering on
one such link is Petr Ginz. Petr was born in Andrew J. Feustel holding the facsimile of Petr Ginz. earth. Petr was deported to Auschwitz in
Prague to an assimilated but culturally Jewish 1944 and murdered on arrival, aged just 16.
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