Deportation to the Camps, 1943

Esther Lurie (1913–1998)

"Everything happening was so foreign and strange, so different from every concept and convention of our lives so far. A desire arose in me to paint from this new reality, to convey things as I saw them. [...] Over time I began to see my work as essential."

Esther Lurie

Born in Liepāja, Latvia. Esther studied stage design in Brussels and painting at the Royal Academy of Arts in Antwerp. In 1934, she and her parents immigrated to the Land of Israel, where she became an active painter. In 1938, she was awarded the Dizengoff Prize for Painting. In 1939, she traveled to Belgium for further studies and during the summer to Latvia and Lithuania to visit relatives. In June 1941, she was caught by the German occupation while visiting her sister in Kovno, and was interned in the ghetto. There, under orders from the Germans, Lurie began painting landscapes and portraits. At the request of the Judenrat, she documented ghetto scenes. Josef Schlesinger, Jacob Lipschitz, and Ben Zion Schmidt joined her in this task. They began this activity in the autumn of 1942 and continued until the liquidation of the ghetto in July 1944. She was then deported to the Stutthof camp, and from there to the Leibitsch camp, where she was assigned to register prisoner numbers. After liberation, she reached Italy, whence she returned to the Land of Israel in July 1945. She married, had two children and continued to be an active artist.