oha 2013

Prague Torah Crown, 1832, with synagogue keys

Art: Begun 2011, completed 2013
Media: Ink, gouache, colored pencil
Framed, 24 1/4 inches H x 20.5 W

Inspired by black & white photos in The Precious Legacy, Judaic Treasures from the Czechoslovak State Collections, orig. pub. by Summit Books and the Smithsonian Institution, 1983.  Editors: David Altschuler, Vivian Mann.

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There were 140,000 Judaic items in the warehouses in Prague at the end of WWII. The Nazis had stolen those items from the Jews of Czechoslovakia. According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, approximately 263,000 Jewish Czechs were murdered by the German & Austrian Nazis during WWII.

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Bibliography: Pub. on the cover of The JT News – Voice of Jewish Washington, August 30, 2014, Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) issue. The JT News was the newspaper for Jewish Seattle and Washington state. The paper, called The Jewish Transcript for decades until around 2003 when the name was changed to The JT News, was in print for 90 years until March 2015. It was published by the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.