Despair

Out of the crowd of people falling down in despairing gestures, single silhouettes of the torturers (among others, a policeman or an SS man shown from behind) and victims emerge. Among the latter we recognise Gina Frydman, née Halpern (1910-1943). This painter from Białystok, a friend of Celnikier, was a frequent subject of his engravings. She belonged, together with her husband Abraham and Celnikier, to a group of Jewish artists who, in the Białystok ghetto, made copies of famous European artists on commission from the German entrepreneur Oskar Steffen. Out of the group of nineteen artists, only Celnikier survived the war. He owes his life to his friend, with whom he hid after the fall of the uprising in the Białystok ghetto, where the action shown in the etching Despair should be placed. The scene is a prologue to an even more dramatic scene from the cycle Memory Engraved, entitled Gina Frydman. (MPOLIN-).

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