Gina Frydman

The Gina Frydman engraving is also known under the title Judith. There is no doubt that Celnikier wanted the epilogue of the annihilation of the Białystok ghetto to refer to biblical history, and to make his friend killed by the Nazis, to whom he owed his life, into an Old Testament Judith (as the title of one of the artist's oil paintings reads). After the fall of the uprising in the Białystok ghetto in August 1943, Gina Frydman directed Celnikier to a group of Jews who were to avoid death as useful professionals. Facing deportation herself, she threw herself at a German soldier with a knife and was shot. The narrative scene of the desperate gesture of the woman raising the knife above the swollen crowd towards the German soldier, whose back is turned to the viewer, is rendered by Celnikier against an expressively contrasted background, under black swirling clouds that add to the horror of the dark silhouettes of the two protagonists of the action. The engraving refers to the composition Despair (MPOLIN-M799/3), which also features Gina Frydman.

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