10 minutes with … Andrea Strongwater

(RNS) Six million Jews perished during the Holocaust, a tragedy mourned every Jan. 27 on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and during the Jewish observance of Yom HaShoah, which falls on April 12 this year. But for Andrea Strongwater, 60, a Polish-American Jew whose grandfather tried to save Jews during World War II, the devastating death […]

(RNS) Six million Jews perished during the Holocaust, a tragedy mourned every Jan. 27 on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and during the Jewish observance of Yom HaShoah, which falls on April 12 this year.

But for Andrea Strongwater, 60, a Polish-American Jew whose grandfather tried to save Jews during World War II, the devastating death toll overshadows a broader loss: an entire way of life — schools, shops, synagogues — that had thrived for centuries, obliterated within a few years.


By painting “The Lost Synagogues of Europe,” a series that recreates some of the historic houses of worship destroyed by the Nazis, the artist hopes to remind younger generations of what — not just who — vanished.

She has completed 70 of 106 planned paintings so far, which have been shown in New York, the Midwest, and sold as postcards at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and online at http://www.astrongwater.com. She recently talked about the project; some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What inspired you to start painting these synagogues, which were destroyed before you were born?

A: I had designed a Jewish calendar and was looking for more subject matter. I found a French book of old Jewish postcards from the late 1800s, early 1900s, and I decided to paint four of the synagogues. Everybody liked them, and once I started doing it, it felt like I was bringing back something that we had lost, that was taken away.

By focusing on the synagogues, it told part of the story that I never heard much about from survivors: what the culture was like, before the bad things happened.

Q: How do you paint something that no longer exists? Do survivors verify the images?

A: I’m basing it on photographs and writings. Very often when I find a photograph, it just says something like “Lodz synagogue,” but Lodz (Poland) had 14 synagogues, so I have to figure out which one it was. I use the Encyclopedia Judaica, the archives at the Jewish Theological Seminary and at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and a CD of old photos that a collector in Israel sent me.


I do have to take some artistic license with the color, because the photographs are black and white, but I make it consistent with what the buildings were made of — stone can be bluish, marble can be yellowish, brick can be reddish.

Q: Like you, most of the people who see your paintings were born after the Holocaust, but many may also have never met any survivors. What do you want them to get from these images?

A: If you’re Jewish, it’s part of your past, and for people who aren’t Jewish, it helps them understand what existed before World War II. It’s not just 6 million people killed — it’s how many synagogues, how many schools, how many teachers, how many butchers …

People under 40 are always shocked by the numbers; they have no awareness that there were thousands of synagogues destroyed during the Nazi regime. Vienna had 22 synagogues, and 21 of them were destroyed.

Q: Some of your paintings show synagogues from Poland, where your grandfather was from. Did you go there to try to find the places where your family may have worshiped?

A: No, I’ve never been there. My grandfather got his whole family to the U.S. during the 1920s, so there wasn’t anyone there during the war. When I was in high school, my great aunt went back to our town, and she said it was just completely wiped off the face of the earth, and there was nothing to see, it would just be heartbreak to go.


Q: How does this project differ from other Holocaust-themed art?

A: There are other artists who do all the screaming people, all this grim horrible stuff about the Holocaust. But I can’t deal with all that, because it just devastates me. Especially for younger people, it no longer resonates. If you’re crying, you’re not paying attention.

I want my work to tell the entire story — the beauty as well as the sadness — without leaving you feeling devastated, so you can really understand it. I want to suck people in, to know that there was something fabulous there before some demonic minds destroyed everything. It’s a celebration … and you know that there was an end, and why there was an end.

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