Comic book boards, lettering and workshop cards for Monika Powalisz and Olga Wróbel's "Przemiany" Museum of the history of Polish Jews

,,Przemiana'' [Transformation] is one of the short stories that make up the comic book album Złote pszczoły. Żydzi międzywojennej Warszawy [Golden Bees. The Jews of Pre-war Warsaw], based on a story by Monika Powalisz, with drawings by six female artists (published by the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw, 2011). It is a twelve-panel adaptation of fragments of the memoirs of Abraham Rotfarb (1921–2010?), submitted to the competition of the YIVO Jewish Research Institute in Vilnius in the late 1930s. Abraham Rotfarb's diary, along with other preserved archival materials, was published in the volume The Last Generation. Autobiographies of Polish Jewish youth of the interwar period from the collection of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York (compiled by Alina Cała, 2003).

Abraham came from a poor family living at Nalewki Street in Warsaw. From the age of three, he studied in cheders (Jewish elementary schools for boys), and later in Polish elementary schools. In his memoirs, he talks about his deep identification with Polish culture, but at the same time points to the experience of being rejected by Poles because of his origin. The comic book shows his exclusion through a metaphorical transformation: the boy becomes a dog. It was inspired by the metaphor included in the draft of his autobiography.

Olga Wróbel made the art for her short story with watercolours and on watercolour paper (as in her comic book Ciemna strona księżyca, 2012). Apart from the panels from Przemiany, the Museum collection also includes pages with the narrative text and the original version (changed in print by the publisher) of the title's lettering.