Listen to Ellen describing the story of By Her Hand
This project is part of our exhibit Our Mothers Ourselves: Legacies that Shape Us
The exhibit opens at the Frederick Layton Gallery
at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in Milwaukee, Wi
on September 18, and will run through December 13, 2025
In March of 1941, the more than 30 thousand Jews of Radom were required to register for an ID card, providing their address, occupation, relatives etc. This information allowed the Nazi occupiers to effectively, efficiently round up the Jews confining them to two Jewish ghettos, which were overcrowded, plagued with disease wherein food was in short supply. These are a subset of my relatives who were rounded up and put into forced labor until the ghettos where liquidated, the population killed or sent to extermination camps. Few, including my mother and father, survived these difficult times, and the ones that followed.
This is a 1941 map of Radom using the archives of the ID card applications to pinpoint (with red dots) where Jews resided between February-April 1941 (The map is provided courtesy of POLIN Museum. Pinpoints of the 1200 Jewish homes and the outlines of the ghettos as of April were provided by Luke Rothman). The image here includes that of my mother, seemingly peering through the outlines of her city, the ghetto walls and their homes which had spanned the length and breadth of the city.
