43
Art display captures war story of survival
By DON SHILLING
YOUNGSTOWN
About 150 people attended the opening of an art exhibit created by a woman who escaped capture by Nazi soldiers as her family was being deported to a concentration camp.
“Fabric of Survival: The Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz” opened Sunday at the Butler Institute of American Art. It contains 36 needlework and fabric collage pieces that depict key scenes in the life of the artist.
“The quality of the stitching is absolutely beautiful,” said Sandra Smith of Poland as she studied a piece that represented Krinitz’s life as a girl before the Nazi occupation of her homeland.
Smith’s friend Mary Kay Driscoll of Poland noted the changing colors.
The first pieces, which show the artist’s life as a child in Poland in Europe in the 1930s, are bright and whimsical. The colors in later pieces are darker as they show intimidation by Nazi soldiers in the early 1940s. Brighter colors return at the end as Krinitz shows her arrival in the U.S. with her family.
“These pictures exude love. They are so incredibly charming,” Driscoll said.
The display runs through May 23. The exhibition is co-sponsored by the Butler and the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation, which kicked off its 75th anniversary celebration with a reception that featured Krinitz’s two daughters.
Bernice Steinhardt of Chevy Chase, Md., and Helene McQuade of Pine Plains, N.Y., have brought the exhibit to a dozen museums in the past eight years.
Julia Davis of North Lima said the artwork caused her to wonder how the Holocaust could have happened. Why didn’t someone stop it? she asked.
Steinhardt, Krinitz’s eldest daughter, said the exhibit resonates with viewers at each of its stops.
“Many people are still haunted by the tragedy of the Holocaust, but what people respond to are the individual stories. That’s what makes it come alive,” she said.
Krinitz, who died in 2001, stitched captions onto each photo so the viewer can understand exactly what is being portrayed. One of those shows her flight from the wagons that were taking the Polish Jews to concentration camps.
Most of the pieces were created after she and her husband moved to Frederick, Md. They were created for her daughters, however, not as art.
“She was very driven to tell her story to her children and her community,” McQuade said.
Steinhardt kept the pieces in her house until she and her sister created a nonprofit foundation that enables them to be on display around the country.
“I realized these needed to be seen by more than my family and friends. They deserved a much wider audience,” she said.