Irena and Lolek Pisek lived in Kraków, Poland with their children, Anita and Vitek. Irena had a doctorate in art, and the family was educated and lived comfortably. When the war broke out the Piseks escaped to an apartment they had prepared earlier in Zamosz. With the city's occupation and the entry of the Soviets, the family fled to Lvov. Fearing disloyalty to the regime, the Soviet authorities evacuated thousands of Jews, including many refugees, from Lvov to deep in the USSR in late June and early July 1940. Together with Irena's mother, the Piseks and many other Jews were transported eastward in sealed freight cars with no food or water. After fourteen grueling days of traveling, the family was taken by boat and then another train to Gladkovski Possialok, a deserted village in Siberia where they arrived sick and exhausted, and were conscripted to rigorous forced labor. Suspected of congregating for political purposes, they were forbidden from gathering on Yom Kippur and Jewish holidays. In order to pray, the men would leave their houses one at a time and go to a secret place in the forest, where they would pray by candle light, or by the light of the moon. The women and children would stay at home since the Soviets customarily conducted house searches on the holidays.
On Yom Kippur, Lolek marched 20 km in order to participate in the Kol Nidre prayer service, and the next morning he marched another 20 km to work, while fasting. In one of her postwar artworks, Irena depicted the Yom Kippur prayer quorum in the snow-covered forest; the cantor is assisted by a man standing by his side holding a candle.
In 1941, the prisoners were pardoned and permitted to move freely throughout the Soviet Union. They organized themselves into groups, hired freight cars and set off towards central Asia. Reaching Shahrisabz in Uzbekistan, the Piseks moved in with a Bukharian Jewish family. Lolek enlisted in Anders' Army and served as officer responsible for transportation. When the army left, Lolek was sick with typhus. Irena, her mother (whose foot had been amputated) and her two children joined the departing soldiers and reached Iran, where they lived in a refugee camp in Tehran. Lolek joined them several months later. The family immigrated to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) in November 1942, and settled in Tel Aviv. Irena depicted her wartime experiences and the trials and tribulations she endured with her family in drawings with accompanying texts.
_2.jpg?itok=gYdTa_Sy "The Siddur (Prayer Book) that Gabriele Kohn Received after Liberation")
