Jewish Artist Honored

The memory of Charlotte Salomon, a German-Jewish artist who died at Auschwitz while still in her twenties, is being honored in Holland with an exhibition of her water colors, painted when she lived in the south of France between 1940-1942, shortly before her deportation.

The exhibit was opened at the Jewish Historical Museum here last Friday. At the same time, a book has been published containing reproductions of nearly 800 of her paintings and a West German film on her life will have its premier in Amsterdam next week. The film was produced by Franz Weiss from a script by Dutch Jewish writer, Judith Herzberg.

Salomon never lived in Holland although her father and stepmother came to Amsterdam in 1939 as refugees from Berlin. The young artist, then 22, went to live with her maternal grandmother in the south of France. Her grandmother committed suicide a year later and it was then that she learned that her mother, who died when she was eight, was also a suicide. At that point she began to paint, as she said at the time, to keep her sanity.

In 1943, she married an Austrian Jewish refugee and shortly afterwards both were deported to Auschwitz. Her paintings were saved and given to her parents after the war. Salomon’s father, a professor of surgery at Berlin University, died some years ago. Her stepmother, Paula Lindbergh, a well known concert singer in her time and singing teacher, still lives in Amsterdam.