Inspired by my interview with Holocaust survivor Rosie Leibman: “I walk back home and I take the long way so no one will see me. So I get close to my house and I see a mob, a mob of people. I go around the avenue to try to avoid the mob and somebody is calling me across the avenue and it was one of my classmates. And the mother comes across the street with her daughter and says don’t go home. The Germans are there, they took your parents. So I am standing frozen. What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go? I was crying and the woman said, ‘Don’t make a scene. Come with me’” (20:00).
In my painting, I aimed to capture the moment Rosie discovered her parents’ abduction by the Nazis. At the center, Rosie is depicted with an expression of profound shock and paralysis, her wide, fearful eyes and tear-streaked face encapsulating her emotional turmoil. Her tense, hesitant posture conveys the overwhelming uncertainty of what might come next.
Beside her, I depicted an elderly woman (who ended up being her high school classmate’s mother) who cautions Rosie against returning home. I wanted this figure to be a beacon of warmth, and so I made use of oranges, yellows, and whites to highlight her face—as if to suggest that she herself is a literal and figurative source of light. Her hand extended in a gesture of hope and protective guidance amidst the chaos.
In stark contrast, an SS soldier stands imposingly behind Rosie, his stern face and cold, dark uniform symbolizing the constant Nazi threat. This figure casts a metaphorical and literal shadow over Rosie’s fate. Importantly, I depicted his gaze as extending beyond Rosie and to the viewer. My goal with this figuration was to pull the viewer into the reality of the trauma, as if to suggest that the viewer might be the next target.
The blurred figures in the background symbolize Rosie’s neighbors who have vanished, their forms fading into the shadows to represent their disappearance into the “unknown world.” I used a dark, muted color palette here to heighten the somber mood of the scene, drawing the viewer’s focus to the emotional intensity displayed on the characters’ faces, set against the surrounding darkness.
