Lamah? (Why?)
#39, Auschwitz Album Revisited Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens As a woman and mother, I can see into this women’s heart. She cannot fathom what she or her children could have done to deserve these horrors. A plaintive look on her face, cries out, “why?” One stunning answer to that question is found…
Is My Dolly Jewish?
#6, Auschwitz Album Revisited Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens A quarter of a million Jews were crammed in a ghetto in Lodz, Poland at the start of the Nazi’s war. By the time the war was over only 800 survived, including 12 children. The story of one of those children– Sylvia Perlmutter Rozines–…
Irene Fogel’s Family Waiting in the Grove
#5, Auschwitz Album Revisited Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens The undressing rooms of Crematorium IV and V were not sufficient for the masses of Hungarian Jews who arrived in the Spring of 1944. Therefore, the Jews had to wait until the undressing rooms were ready to absorb them. The common waiting place was…
If Only We’d Gone to Israel
#38, Auschwitz Album Revisited Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens Imagine how people grieved bitter tears of regret right up to the moment of death. If only they had immigrated to Zion. If only we’d gone to another country when we could have. If only we’d seen the signs of the times. If only…
Humiliation
#11, Auschwitz Album RevisitedOil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens (Olga Reider & her two Daughters) Concentration camps for women were especially diabolical. Women and girls endured unbelievable processes of humiliation, including exposure, crude body cavity searches, painful shaves of all body hair, daily mocking or beating, forced prostitution, multiple rapes, rapes with instruments and…
Elder of Zion
#15, Auschwitz Album Revisited Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens Appelplatz is a German word meaning place (platz) of roll call (appel). Incoming prisoners were made to stand for hours morning and night, regardless of the weather, while thousands on the roll were counted. It was a time of humiliation and beating. Many died…
Emma and Her Four Boys
#12, Auschwitz Album Revisited Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens Here is a mother with her four boys. Three are standing with her. One is in the womb. They are pausing in the line until prodded to continue shuffling slowly toward the gas chambers. None of these boys are 18, the age where many…
End of the Line
#35, Artistic Interpretation Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens Someone was the last one in line. The very last one to be dragged all the way from their country and home, herded like animals in a cattle car, stripped, humiliated, pushed in a crematorium, gassed, burned in ovens and then thrown out over the…
Even the Trees Weep
#27, Auschwitz Album Revisited Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens Genesis teaches God created all that exists – the heavens, earth and all that has life. Mankind was special, different from the rest of creation, because mankind (men and women) were created in GOD’S IMAGE. “Has not ONE God created us?” (Mal. 2:10) It…
Fit to Work
#31, Auschwitz Album Revisited Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens Once these women arrived, to Auschwitz everything they had brought with them was taken away and thrown into huge piles. Men were separated from the women and children. Women were then divided into ‘fit to work’ and ‘unfit to work’ lines. Their hair was…