For six months, the Yad Vashem Museum of Art will display a moving exhibition titled “Forgotten Childhoods,” a series of paintings that take an intimate look at the experiences of Jewish children during the Holocaust, opening on the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Among the works on display is “The Last Goodbye,” a painting made by Ernie Meyer at the age of 16, in which he immortalized the moment when he said goodbye to his mother at the train station in Cologne, Germany, before being sent to England on the Kindertransport with his sister Eva. After that farewell, Meyer never saw his parents again, who were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.
Another piece is by Yair Noam, born in Germany in 1922, who immigrated to Israel in 1938, shortly before his parents were murdered by the Nazis. His drawing depicts an imaginary scenario in which his family is reunited in Israel.
Yad Vashem is also displaying six paintings by Michael Falk, who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel, where he painted memories of his childhood in Nazi Germany, including a scene in which a child is abused in a schoolyard while a teacher ignores the assault.