Nathalie Blau

"A Time to Heal" (Ecclesiastes 3: 3)The Children of Écouis: From Buchenwald to Normandy

“We have found approximately one thousand Jewish children in Buchenwald.  Please organize evacuation without delay." This chilling message was dispatched by a US Army commander to the offices of the OSE Child Aid Society in Geneva during the liberation of Buchenwald in April 1945. The troops arriving at the infamous German concentration camp could barely comprehend the images their eyes saw. Mangled corpses and living skeletons intermixed and indistinguishable from one another; beaten and... Continue reading

The Strength of the Collective

Part II (See Blog "The Artifacts at Yad Vashem: Silent Witnesses to the Shoah” part I) After almost four decades of hiding in the shadows, artifacts now play an important role in providing testimony and attesting to the events that occurred during the Holocaust. The Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection contains a wide variety of items that survived the Holocaust, from personal effects to objects of worship or other everyday items used in the camps and in hiding. Some were created in extreme... Continue reading

The Artifacts at Yad Vashem: Silent Witnesses to the Shoah

Some 34,000 items, large and small, fill the drawers and shelves of Yad Vashem's Artifacts Collection. A number of them are on display at the Holocaust History Museum, others at the Yad Vashem Synagogue, and some are used for temporary exhibitions in Israel and around the world. But whether on display or not, all of Yad Vashem's artifacts pose as "silent witnesses" to the Holocaust. Yad Vashem has been working hard to record the testimony of their former owners for several decades, in order to... Continue reading

Choosing Life: The Creations of Charlotte Salomon

The story of Charlotte Salomon, a Jewish painter of German origin who fled to France in the 1940s, is upsetting and provocative, which makes it also fascinating. This was a journey filled with personal drama, which merges into the depravity of a world in agony during WWII. What is most interesting is the sharp and lucid look by the artist at German society while the worst is emerging in Europe. How did this young woman in her twenties find within herself the ability to draw with such precision... Continue reading