[Hescheles, Janina] and Erna Rosenstein, artist.

[HOLOCAUST IN POLAND – SURREALISM] Oczyma dwunastoletniej dziewczyny [Through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl].

Kraków: Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna, 1946. Octavo (22.3 × 15 cm). Original pictorial wrappers by Erna Rosenstein; 73, [2] pp. Portrait. Wrappers with foxing along edges; else about very good. Item #54606

First publication of this manuscript by twelve-year old Janina Hescheles (Janina Altman, 1931–2022), who survived the anti-semitic pogroms in Lviv and later deportation to a forced labor camp. Issued and edited by the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland and with an introduction by Maria Hochberg-Mariańska.

The wrappers feature a drawing by Polish-Jewish surrealist artist Erna Rosenstein (1913–2004), here credited as "Ella" instead of "Erna." Born in an intellectual family in Lemberg (Lviv), Rosenstein studied art in Vienna and Kraków in the interwar period, becoming part of the Kraków avant-garde group. The Paris Surrealist Exhibition of 1937 shaped her visual vocabulary, though the majority of her artistic work from this period was lost during WWII. A holocaust survivor who lost both her parents during the war, Rosenstein resumed painting in 1945. A life-long leftist and a member of the Polish Workers’ Party, Rosenstein was nevertheless silenced as an artist during the Socialist Realist period in Poland in 1949–1955, continuing to make abstract and surrealist work underground. In 1955 she would be one of the key figures in the revival of the Kraków avant-garde group. Her first solo exhibition was held in Warsaw in 1958. Most recently, her work was shown in the Surrealism Beyond Borders exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and at Tate Modern (2021–2022).

Price: €150.00

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