On loan from the New York Public Library and the French Children of the Holocaust Foundation, a local art exhibit will provide a first-hand view of the human drama that unfolded among Jews forced to work as slave laborers during World War II.
“Letters to Sala: A Young Woman’s Life in Nazi Labor Camps” will be on display from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays — excluding Tuesday — through March 26 at the Temple Beth Israel Synagogue in Eugene.@@http://calendar.uoregon.edu/EventList.aspx?view=EventDetails&eventidn=1153&information_id=6676&type=&rss=rss@@
“Personally, my grandfather was in a work camp, and I have letters that he wrote to his wife and to my father,” Temple Beth Israel Executive Director Nina Korican said. “So it’s not far from our community. I think it’s very moving for people to come and see how this woman made it through.”@@http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nina-korican/41/39a/650@@
The exhibit presents a graphic narrative through copies of letters and photographs collected for more than five years by Sala Garncarz, a young woman drawn into the bedlam of Hitler’s Final Solution.@@http://www.claimscon.org/?url=allocations/sala@@ The event is sponsored by the University’s Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic studies.@@http://pages.uoregon.edu/jdst/@@
Lena Elkins, a University sophomore in international studies, felt that the exhibit is enlightening for those in her age group.@@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/Lena*Elkins@@
“As a Jew, and having family members who went through the Holocaust, it makes you think,” Elkins said. “It’s important to hear testimony from people our own age. We’re lucky. We get to go to college and be free.”
“It’s really interesting to get this perspective of what life was like in these camps. There’s been a lot research done here, but yet the exhibit it’s presented in such an easy way to grasp,” said University professor Deborah Green, the Judaic studies program director.
Sala was 16 years old in 1940 when she was sent to a labor camp where males were charged with the construction of the Autobahn and women were performing laundry and kitchen duties. She cycled through seven different camps in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia and received more than 300 letters mailed or smuggled to her by friends and family in the ghettos or in other camps. Somehow, she survived the war and married a U.S. Army corporal, fleeing to America.
“There’s actually a lot of hope that exists in this,” Green said. “People have this amazing capacity to start over, no matter how bad it is.”
In her old age and about to undergo heart surgery, Sala finally made the decision to pass the documents on to her daughter, Ann Kirschner, who processed them into a book, “Sala’s Gift: My Mother’s Holocaust Story.”
Kirschner will perform a lecture to culminate the exhibit March 25 at 7:30 p.m. at Temple Beth Israel. It will be part of the annual Western Jewish Studies Association Conference, which the University will host on March 25 and 26.@@http://www.wjsa.net/cfpapers.html@@