Portrait of Ludwik Pinkus

Tereska (Zuzanna Teresa) Torrès – the only daughter of Gina and Marek Szwarc – recalls her grandparents: [grandmother – Zosia Pinkus] is small and rounded but grandpa Pinkus, in turn, is incredibly tall. He’s got a grey beard, wears very elegant clothing and is always holding a long cigar in his hand – just like on that portrait Marek painted. It is hanging high up on the wall of the studio, and opposite to it – the portrait of grandma. Both the paintings survived many harsh years. I look at them now. And I look at my grandparents, still living on the canvas, and I can smell my grandpa’s cigars. He used to give me excise stamps he’d removed from them, so that I could carefully glue them in my notebook. […] Grandpa Pinkus runs the most famous furrier business in the city. It’s situated in grandparent’s huge apartment on the second floor (at 58 Piotrkowska Street). The walls of the spacious room are crowded with wardrobes filled with coypus, otters and karakul furs. A huge polar beer skin is lying on the floor. I sneak into the room once the shop is already closed – I sit on the white bear, lay my hand on its head with blue glass eyes, and I’m off to the unknown lands on my magic carpet. (T. Torrès, Pamiętnik na trzy głosy, Krakow 2003, p. 18).After escaping from France in 1940, the Pinkus family (through Lisbon and Gibraltar) arrived in Canada. Ludwik Piknus died in Montreal at the beginning of the 1940s.RP