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This project is a collaboration with the artist Myra Roberts, who created thirty oil paintings featuring excerpts from Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, and with Florida journalist Ella Nayor. Her book "Faces of Tolerance: Everyone Counts". The book contains interviews with victims of intolerance.
The purpose of Project Tolerance is to promote understanding and social justice. I chose Anne Frank as a symbol representing all victims of intolerance from the past and present. The Holocaust stands alone as an unprecedented event. Hitler tried to rid the entire world of the Jewish culture. Included were homosexuals, the handicapped, Gypsies, political dissidents, and even ordinary citizens.
Anne's wish to go on living even after her death is more important than ever. Her words continue to educate humanity about the consequences of intolerance, racism, and discrimination. My hope for this exhibit is for the next generation to build a better world -- based on mutual respect.
My father, Benjamin Weingrowski, and my grandparents, Meyer and Yetta Pruzansky, were victims of persecution in the ghettos of Poland and Russia. My father, born in Nareka, Poland, would have been part of the ninety percent of the Jewish population annihilated during World War Two had he not fled the country. My grandfather, who was from the village of Motol in Russia, was brutally beaten on the head by a Russian soldier's club for not pulling out his identity papers fast enough. Post-traumatic stress always lingered within my father and grandfather.
I remember a high school friend's parents. Their concentration camp tattooed numbers were burned into their flesh and into my soul: Her mother was eighteen and beautiful. She stood naked at the gas chamber door. She knew her fate. A young guard locked eyes with the young beauty. She was shoved into the room crowded with panicked and naked, screaming people shoving her further in.
She made her way back to the door where she pounded and screamed in German. "This is a mistake. I am a German secretary." She screamed until her voice gave out. Gas filled the room, she could not see, nor take another choking breath.
She woke in a hospital bed. Her beauty saved her. The guard pulled her limp body from the gas chamber.
I tried hard to forget that story. I noticed that my friend's mother slept most of the time and her dad was filled with rage. I saw some of this in my own home. My father lost many relatives in Poland and I now understand some of his pain.
As an artist who paints light-hearted, retro-Florida images, I have always admired social commentary art. Francisco Goya, Marc Chagall, Käthe Kollwitz, and Felix Nussbaum are a few examples of thousands of artists who have had a need to make a difference.
I have always loved the words of Anne Frank. Anne has a universal message that transcends time. She believes that when the war is over she will be a "human being" and not a Jew who must be in hiding or be destroyed.
Project Tolerance is the belief that, indeed, we are all just human, that we all have the same needs and desires. We want to be loved, happy, well fed, and safe. Yet, as Anne did in 1942, I question why we continue to destroy others for mere differences of religion, sexual preference or skin color, and a host of other prejudices. I painted thirty portraits of Anne because she is innocence personified. She was a beautiful soul who saw through the darkness clearly. Decades have passed and her words remain seared in my brain. I want the words to take flight through my paintings. I dream of a world, as Anne did, where we see our oneness, our connection to a better world.
Myra Roberts Art Show at Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center
Sanibel artist Myra Roberts was honored opening night at the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center on March 2 for “Project Tolerance: Faces of Anne Frank” as well as selections of her most recent vintage Florida art. The series of 50-plus paintings will be on display at the art center, located at 2301 First Street in Fort Myers, until March 30.
Thousands of guests turned up for the gala art event to tour the exhibit hall and meet Roberts, who has become one of Southwest Florida’s most high-profile artists. Many were touched by the original portraits of Anne Frank, spending a great deal of time looking at each painting and reading the Artist Comments that described the meaning and composition of each piece. A number of people related personal experiences to Roberts.
“One of the many amazing conversations I had that evening was with a survivor who is friends with a woman in her 80s who was with Anne as she lay dying of typhus,” said Roberts. “Also speaking with parents who brought their children to the event to teach their young ones about the importance of tolerance and Anne Frank’s story. Several people were moved to tears and thanked me for using my talent to send a message.”
Visit MyraRoberts.com to see more of her art.
The Berne Davis Art Center is open from 9:00-5:00 p.m. Monday-Friday. 239-333-1933
Be sure to visit:
Interview with Myra Roberts and Ella Nayor on Gulfcoast Live
January 5
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