Brzostek, Poland, Landscape
Object numberM2013/043:003
TitleBrzostek, Poland, Landscape
Creator Mr. Adam Szus
DescriptionDrawing of a landscape depicting the artists Grandfather’s farm house with the mountains of Brzostek, Poland, in the background. Created with pen, ink and coloured pencils by Avraham Leib Szus (Adam Szus), Sydney, 1992. His maternal grandfather Yitzhak Rubel had ten children, nine daughters and a son. He was a farmer and had many fields, cattle and horses.
Adam Szus was born in 1917 in Brzostek to Hinda (nee Rubel) and Mendel Szus. Adam was one of 11 children, four died before the war and seven were alive before the outbreak of war. Adam was the youngest. He studied at the yeshiva, and become a silversmith. In 1942, aged 25, he was sent to the Lemberg-Janowska concentration camp where he laboured as a metal worker. He spent the next three years in concentration and labour camps. He was forced to bury fellow prisoners; to break up Jewish cemeteries to turn them into mass graves. He found and buried his own family. He joined the partisans in 1944. After liberation, he returned to Brzostek where only four Jews remained alive. Adam married in 1946 and in 1959 he and his wife and two children migrated to Australia.
In 1978 he was a witness at the trial of an SS Officer in Saarbrücken, Germany, that of Friedrich Heines, whom he had seen commit atrocities in the Lwow Janowska camp. Adam was not a trained artist, though he learned to draw when he studied as a silversmith. Upon retirement at the age of 71, he started to draw, turning to visual testimony as a means of grappling with events that he personally witnessed and experienced, drawing scenes of torture, beatings and murder.
The drawing is one of 11 artworks he created to illustrate his memoir, 'Not to Forgive, Remember...Don't Forget, the Biography of Abraham Leib Schuss at the time of the Second World War'.
Adam Szus was born in 1917 in Brzostek to Hinda (nee Rubel) and Mendel Szus. Adam was one of 11 children, four died before the war and seven were alive before the outbreak of war. Adam was the youngest. He studied at the yeshiva, and become a silversmith. In 1942, aged 25, he was sent to the Lemberg-Janowska concentration camp where he laboured as a metal worker. He spent the next three years in concentration and labour camps. He was forced to bury fellow prisoners; to break up Jewish cemeteries to turn them into mass graves. He found and buried his own family. He joined the partisans in 1944. After liberation, he returned to Brzostek where only four Jews remained alive. Adam married in 1946 and in 1959 he and his wife and two children migrated to Australia.
In 1978 he was a witness at the trial of an SS Officer in Saarbrücken, Germany, that of Friedrich Heines, whom he had seen commit atrocities in the Lwow Janowska camp. Adam was not a trained artist, though he learned to draw when he studied as a silversmith. Upon retirement at the age of 71, he started to draw, turning to visual testimony as a means of grappling with events that he personally witnessed and experienced, drawing scenes of torture, beatings and murder.
The drawing is one of 11 artworks he created to illustrate his memoir, 'Not to Forgive, Remember...Don't Forget, the Biography of Abraham Leib Schuss at the time of the Second World War'.
Subjectart, Post-Holocaust Art
Object namedrawings
Materialpaper
Dimensions
- height: 209.00 mm
width: 296.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Adam and Sonia Szus