This painting  is based on an image derived from the book " Ponary Diary 1941-43"  by the journalist Kazimierz Sakowicz.   Sakowicz lived near the forest where he witnessed and documented the murders of the Jews of Vilnius.  Each day he buried what he wrote in a jar in the forest.  In his book he writes of how local Lithuanians performed the murders.   After the war these pages began to surface in archives until Dr. Rachel Margolis got access to them and was able to piece them together for the first publishing in Polish.  The book proved quite controversial as it named many of the Lithuanians who participated in the murders. After the war many of these Lithuanians fought the Soviets and were considered national heros. 

The title of the painting is "Buried Truths".  I found the image of bottles buried in the forest to be an interesting one and wanted to build a sense of layering that conveyed something hidden.  I wanted a few bottles near the top to be sprouting pages as if they were plants.  Somehow truths have a way of eventually surfacing.

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In Vilnius we visited a restaurant that stood in front of the area that once housed the old synagogue, now destroyed.  One evening we spoke with the owner who told us that when renovating the space, they discovered a tunnel that ran from near the old synagogue under the restaurant to outside of what was once the ghetto gates. The proprietor of the restaurant showed us the gate to the tunnel. As we stood under the starry night sky we could almost imagine the synagogue that once stood there.

She also shared with us a story about an elderly man who came to the restaurant one day. He stood in front of the restaurant for a long time and then came in and asked if he could sit in a particular room, one where one wall is filled with a rack of wine bottles. He looked distressed as he sat there and she asked if she could get him some coffee. He turned to her and said, “This used to be my bedroom”. He had lived in that building when it was part of the ghetto with his mother and sisters. When he stood up to leave he said, “I won’t be back again”.

Yet another story she shared with us was about when they were renovating the space late at night. They often felt and saw a presence which she felt was benign, as if it were children. She had learned that the coal chute was often a hiding place for children during the ghetto when hiding successfully meant another day of life. As we left we had told her that if she felt the presence again she should say, “Shalom Aleichem” which means “Peace be with you”.

All of those stories are reflected in my painting titled “Shalom Aleichem”. In this painting an old man is the central figure. I based the painting on an elder Lithuanian man who was attending the Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Behind him are circles within circles signifying the wine rack which gradually melts into a starry night sky. Above him is the gate to the tunnel with the tunnel leading from its lower left corner in the direction of the ghetto gates. A chute with the suggestion of a child flows into it, perhaps a recollection of the old man, perhaps a ghost-like presence.

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