![[nb-NO]Go to[nb-NO] Sydney Jewish Museum [nb-NO]Home page[nb-NO]](/AIS/Content/Images/logo_b3660c53.svg){kind=logo}
Erinnerungen (Memories)
[nb-NO]Object number[nb-NO]M2007/041
[nb-NO]Title[nb-NO]Erinnerungen (Memories)
[nb-NO]Description[nb-NO]Painting, titled Erinnerungen (Memories), oil on canvas, by Anna Boucher; done in 1998 as part of her major work for the HSC at Willoughby Girls High School. The painting depicts her grandmother (extreme left), Hermina Sapera (nee Silberfeld), and other members of family (including her grandfather) and the donor-artist (extreme right). It depicts Hermina in her garden in Artarmon. On the right is a violin: Hermina played the piano and violin and later in life took up the violin again.
The artwork was shortlisted for Art Express and placed equal 6th in the State for Art in 1998. It also placed 2nd in the Mosman Art Awards in 1999. “The artwork is essentially an exploration of my relationship to my grandmother and her relationship to her past. Her migration to Australia in 1956 assisted in her healing process after surviving the Holocaust. In particular, she told me that she found gardening very relaxing, and that is why I have depicted her in her garden in Artarmon. The fence in the background merges into the town of Krakow, where she grew up and then the gas chambers of concentration camps, to reflect her experiences in the Warsaw ghetto during the war. The other people in the painting (aside from myself) are family members who are dressed in 1940s clothing so that they appear both as part of Babcia’s present and distant experience.” Anna Boucher, July 2006
Hermina was born to Polish Jews Nathan Silberfeld and Anna (nee Hollander) on 27 November 1914 in Miskolc, Hungary. In 1918, the family returned to their home in the small town of Stary Sacz, Poland. Hermina attended a convent, which gave her a knowledge of German and Catholicism that was particularly helpful for her survival during the Holocaust.
In September 1939, Hermina, her parents and other relatives fled east by horse and cart. The Germans were bombarding Poland as they travelled and Hermina remembered hiding in ditches as the planes flew overhead. Halfway through their journey they managed to board a train, but during the trip Hermina was injured in the head by shrapnel from a German attack. They sheltered in the Ukrainian town of Drohobych while Hermina recovered and then moved on to Tarnopol. After several months there, Hermina went alone to join her brother Isidor in Lvov, where he had secured her a job as a bookkeeper. Sometime after she left, her parents were transported to Siberia by the Soviet regime.
In 1942, Hermina attained false identification papers of a Polish-Catholic woman, Jadwiga Eleonora Jarzemiszewska. As Jadwiga she was able to find new accommodation and work, and at the end of 1942, moved to Krakow to better safeguard her secret. She was questioned by Gestapo officials and at one stage held in a prison as a suspected Jew, but released after a week. In 1943 she moved to Warsaw and then to Budapest, where she was until liberation.
After the war she kept the name Jadwiga and got work in Bucharest typing the testimonies of concentration camp survivors for the Association of Polish Jewish Refugees. She found out her father had died of hunger and disease, but her mother and brother survived. She was reunited with them in Poland. She lived in Katowice, Poland, with her husband Jan Sapera who she met and married in 1946. Jan was also a survivor, having been in a POW camp, a work camp in Biala Podlaska and the Lodz Ghetto. They immigrated to Australia in 1958 with their three children. In the last decade of her life she re-adopted her Jewish name Hermina.
The artwork was shortlisted for Art Express and placed equal 6th in the State for Art in 1998. It also placed 2nd in the Mosman Art Awards in 1999. “The artwork is essentially an exploration of my relationship to my grandmother and her relationship to her past. Her migration to Australia in 1956 assisted in her healing process after surviving the Holocaust. In particular, she told me that she found gardening very relaxing, and that is why I have depicted her in her garden in Artarmon. The fence in the background merges into the town of Krakow, where she grew up and then the gas chambers of concentration camps, to reflect her experiences in the Warsaw ghetto during the war. The other people in the painting (aside from myself) are family members who are dressed in 1940s clothing so that they appear both as part of Babcia’s present and distant experience.” Anna Boucher, July 2006
Hermina was born to Polish Jews Nathan Silberfeld and Anna (nee Hollander) on 27 November 1914 in Miskolc, Hungary. In 1918, the family returned to their home in the small town of Stary Sacz, Poland. Hermina attended a convent, which gave her a knowledge of German and Catholicism that was particularly helpful for her survival during the Holocaust.
In September 1939, Hermina, her parents and other relatives fled east by horse and cart. The Germans were bombarding Poland as they travelled and Hermina remembered hiding in ditches as the planes flew overhead. Halfway through their journey they managed to board a train, but during the trip Hermina was injured in the head by shrapnel from a German attack. They sheltered in the Ukrainian town of Drohobych while Hermina recovered and then moved on to Tarnopol. After several months there, Hermina went alone to join her brother Isidor in Lvov, where he had secured her a job as a bookkeeper. Sometime after she left, her parents were transported to Siberia by the Soviet regime.
In 1942, Hermina attained false identification papers of a Polish-Catholic woman, Jadwiga Eleonora Jarzemiszewska. As Jadwiga she was able to find new accommodation and work, and at the end of 1942, moved to Krakow to better safeguard her secret. She was questioned by Gestapo officials and at one stage held in a prison as a suspected Jew, but released after a week. In 1943 she moved to Warsaw and then to Budapest, where she was until liberation.
After the war she kept the name Jadwiga and got work in Bucharest typing the testimonies of concentration camp survivors for the Association of Polish Jewish Refugees. She found out her father had died of hunger and disease, but her mother and brother survived. She was reunited with them in Poland. She lived in Katowice, Poland, with her husband Jan Sapera who she met and married in 1946. Jan was also a survivor, having been in a POW camp, a work camp in Biala Podlaska and the Lodz Ghetto. They immigrated to Australia in 1958 with their three children. In the last decade of her life she re-adopted her Jewish name Hermina.
[nb-NO]Production place[nb-NO]Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
[nb-NO]Date[nb-NO] circa 1998
[nb-NO]Object name[nb-NO]paintings
[nb-NO]Dimensions[nb-NO]
- width: 1680.00 mm
height: 1250.00 mm
[nb-NO]Credit line[nb-NO]Sydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Anna Boucher