Graphic Collage. Holocaust

"Someday, this is all going to end, you know. I was going to say we'll have a drink then." -- Schingler's List.
I came to this work almost by accident—one evening, re‑watching Schindler’s List, that quiet line echoed louder than ever. It reminded me that every human life saved, or lost, is measured not only in numbers but in moments never lived: a shared drink, a wedding toast, a child’s bedtime story.
Growing up in the Soviet Union, the Second World War—and the genocide of Europe’s Jews—was more than a chapter in a textbook; the collective memory was vast, yet oddly impersonal. My practice seeks to return intimacy to that enormity.
This piece is not an illustration of history but a conversation with the past, which we don’t want to return, but which we cannot and must not forget. Central to the composition is a juxtaposition of time and trauma, signified by the symbols of light and shadow. The focal point—a mother clutching her child—lies within a fractured Star of David, symbolizing the destruction of Jewish identity during the war. Behind them, a desolate barracks hints at the harshness of forced labor camps, while a silhouette of barbed wire stretches across the background, symbolizing the inescapable terror that defined the camps.
The broken window with shards scattered across the foreground alludes to the shattering of lives, while the distant, looming train tracks evoke the grim reality of deportations. Overhead, a raven—historically a symbol of both omen and survival—cuts through the sky, embodying the relentless passage of time and the looming presence of death.
I anchor the composition around a fragile tension: hope versus finality. The muted color palette, inspired by wartime photographs aged with time, is interrupted by small reserves of light—gestures toward the resilience that allowed culture, humor, and ritual to survive in ghettos and camps. The work asks: Which memories illuminate, and which still need rescuing from the dark?
By exhibiting in Jewish cultural and social centers, I hope the piece becomes less an object and more a site of shared memory—sparking dialogue between generations who carry the trauma firsthand and those of us who inherited its echoes. May we honor every unseen drink that was never taken, and every life that might yet be toasted.