In a University

Moving to England a few years later brought new challenges and revelations. One thing I noticed was that the intergenerational relationships in families who hadn’t lived through the Holocaust seemed much less complicated.

These observations led me to begin formally researching how the Holocaust’s effects ripple through families. I started speaking with children of survivors, gathering firsthand accounts of how their lives had been shaped by their parents’ experiences. Some of these people, who appeared to live perfect lives on the surface, spoke openly about persistent misery, guilt, sleepless nights, and relationships fractured by inherited trauma.

I focused my university studies on how art is used to express and process the effects of the Holocaust.

I created art pieces like Skins, which explored how our bodies carry the stories of our lives — the scars, the textures, the unseen marks that trauma leaves behind. Then came Scratches, an image of the Nazi eagle clawing through a mother, daughter, and granddaughter — symbols of pain passed down through time.

But art alone was never enough. I believe that when you have a talent, it’s for a reason. Were my academic studies and pieces making a difference? Did I change people’s lives? I had to be honest,  the answer was no.

In the Care Home

I didn’t set out to become a community artist. That route started partly out of necessity;  I needed to support my family. But I also wanted to make an impact, so I started working in care homes with elderly patients who suffered from stroke, dementia, and other issues.

One day, I was asked to give a presentation connected to some donors from London. I was under so much emotional and financial stress at the time, and I remember feeling overwhelmed and unsure if I could do it. But I gave the presentation, explaining how we used art to support the elderly in the care home.

The next day, I got a call. The donors told me, “We’re not funding that care home, but we want to fund you.”

They gave me four years of funding to work with Holocaust survivors in care homes across northwest England, helping them capture their stories through art and use their own creations to deal with their trauma. It was a moment that changed the trajectory of my life.

Through my work in care homes, I met incredible people, but also deeply broken ones. Many survivors have amazing stories of resilience; many are still carrying unbearable pain.

I realized that society often looks at elderly or disabled people dismissively, as if their value has diminished. Creating artwork shifts that mindset. Some of my most meaningful work is with adults with special needs, like those in the Friendship Circle. Seeing the pride on their faces at exhibitions is priceless. They feel like valuable members of the community again.

One unforgettable encounter: I met an Auschwitz survivor living in a care home, and when I entered her room, I was hit by an overwhelming stench. The space was infested with worms. There was rotting food hidden everywhere because she was still terrified of going hungry, just like in the concentration camp, decades earlier.

She rarely left her room. When I asked why, her answer broke my heart: “The carers remind me of Nazis. They tell me when to eat, when to sleep, what to wear — just like in the camps.”

I wanted desperately to help her, so I brought her a ceramic plate and asked her to draw on it. Without hesitation, she drew the gates of Auschwitz. Then she drew herself in the middle, surrounded by words in unsteady handwriting: “Look where you are, and I’m still here.”

In Isolation

Covid was an earthquake that shut everything down. I sheltered at home with my son, who was ill and immunocompromised. And I went from a full calendar of art sessions to no bookings for a year. It was terrifying.

I adapted, finding ways to create and connect despite the pandemic. I did art sessions online. I reached out to old contacts and offered them art packs for people stuck at home. I put together packs, left them in my garden for pickup, then ran Zoom art sessions. Some days, I did four or five sessions with people from all over the world.

One stroke patient was paralyzed, nonverbal, and could only use one hand. Every week, her care worker would set up an iPad and she would paint with me on Zoom, communicating with her eyes. She never missed a session. It was the kind of willpower that inspired me.

The art sessions also created a sense of community. When restrictions had eased (somewhat), I was invited to someone’s house on Pesach.

One of their children ran up to me, shouting, “Are you Chava from Zoom?” Then he ran upstairs and brought an album he’d made with his family — a whole Covid story told through paint and paper.

During that lonely, dark time, art became a powerful way for people to process their pain and find joy, even in isolation. It wasn’t a cure, but it was healing.

In the Moment

People often ask me if I get feedback from my sessions.

Yes — a whole album full of letters and stories.

Sometimes I visit families during shivah, and they pull out the paintings and say, “This is all we have left of Mom.” The art carries a weight beyond words, the piece of a loved one they can still hold.

And I get to watch people find parts of themselves they didn’t know existed. A young chassidish woman came to me years ago. She’d married young and felt like she hadn’t been able to get in touch with herself. Through her art, something shifted. Today, she’s a therapist in her community.

“You showed me I can have a voice,” she said.

But I didn’t show her anything. I watched. The art did the work.

Another story that moves me: a Holocaust survivor who painted her war memories — the cruel soldiers, the farm where she was hidden, her losses and her grief. Her children and grandchildren won’t sit for the stories, but they study those paintings. They’re history preserved in brushstrokes.

Then there’s the great-grandmother from England. Traditional, proper. She started making art that wasn’t what I’d expected, peaceful scenes of candlesticks and the Kosel. Instead, her paintings were searching and honest, like an art student’s work. She began visiting museums to sketch, moving beyond the expected, and found a beautiful part of herself.

I believe that giving people the chance to create gives strength, even for those who’ve lost control over almost everything else. A man who can only move one hand still paints abstract pieces that reveal his inner landscape — and suddenly, he’s not just the stroke patient, he’s the artist.

Families add me to their WhatsApp groups to share “Granddad’s” creations. When an older person starts making art, the entire family dynamic transforms. Instead of conversations centered on limitations and medical updates, suddenly, there’s excitement about this week’s painting. Instead of wanting to escape the care home, kids often ask to join the art session.

The art becomes the picture of who they are beneath the diagnoses and everyone else’s expectations.

In an Art Café

Some stories, like those of certain Holocaust survivors, have gotten under my skin. The pain they carry changes you. Yet I’m also grateful. Being in a position to help is worth it, even when the work sometimes feels so heavy.

Over the years, I’ve realized that we all carry trauma in different ways. The term PTSD gets thrown around casually, but most of us live with some version of it — that constant hum of worry, the tension we carry in our bodies from experiences we can’t quite process.

My son lives in Israel, and when the sirens were going off and alerts flashed on my phone, I felt like I was living through the endless war without being there.

My brother joked, “Why don’t you just go to a shelter here in England?” He had a point, but trauma isn’t always so logical.

Working with people’s experiences — not only in care centers, but in my own Art Café  — teaches me as much as it teaches them. Every story, every session, shows me something about how we survive and express what we can’t say. Everyone is dealing with something, and everyone also has the chance to transform pain into meaning.

Because happiness and gratitude is a choice, no matter what we’ve been through. Watching people struggle, you realize that brokenness is universal — but so is the capacity to create something from that brokenness.

In the Soul

We live in a world obsessed with the externals — looks, clothing, and possessions.

Art helps us see past that, to the beauty beneath.

I recently finished a project called “Who We Were,” which put people’s stories and art alongside historical context. Now I’m working on “Legacy Threads,” where people record their life stories through art. I’m always searching, reinventing, relishing the constant excitement of what I do.

But the greatest gift art has given me — and all the people I work with — is that it lets us see a person’s soul. When someone paints, it’s their heart and spirit that guide the brush. Every stroke is a piece of who we are.

Through art, I’ve seen countless transformations; people who thought they had nothing left to give, suddenly glowing with purpose.

I want people to know that it’s never too late to create, to express, and to heal. Whether you’re a Holocaust survivor, living with a disability, or simply seeking, art can be a bridge.

More than anything, I hope my work shows that every person has value — beyond looks, beyond achievements. There is a spark inside each of us, as Rav Shamshon Rephael Hirsch refers to it, the “chelek Eloka mima’al.”

We just need to remember to see it — and let others see it, too.

Survivor

I created this drawing after working with a Holocaust survivor in her nineties. She lived through Auschwitz and carried deep, lifelong trauma. In her later years, she also suffered from dementia. Every day, she would put on her sheitel, her pearls, and try to apply her lipstick. It was always smudged around her mouth because she no longer had the coordination to put it on properly — yet she kept trying. Maintaining her appearance was her way of holding on to dignity.

Because of her dementia, she often lived in emotional torment. Dementia can pull people back into their earliest memories, and for her, that meant reliving the horrors of the camps. When carers of Polish origin spoke to her, she would become terrified and hysterical, crying out, “They’re coming for me, they’re coming for me!” I watched her exist in two realities at once; her body was safe in a warm, caring home, but her mind and emotions were still in Auschwitz. It was extremely painful to witness.

What struck me most was the conflict between her fierce desire to remain dignified — to present herself well, to care about her appearance — and the deep trauma that continued to overwhelm her. The contrast was extraordinary and profoundly moving.

Working with her taught me something essential: When people are stripped of their human rights, dignity becomes one of the most precious things they fight to hold on to. The ability to care for oneself, even in the smallest ways, is deeply human. And watching her cling to that dignity, despite everything she had endured, left a lasting impression on me.

The Soldier

“He is only a child, yet he is a soldier, all the same. I can still hear the boots… clunk, clunk, clunk.

When I painted him, I left his face blank — innocent. I want to believe that he was forced into serving, forced to join the evil of the Nazi German army. He is only a child. And still, I hear the boots going clunk, clunk, clunk.”

—L., 90+, Holocaust Survivor

“Please don’t write my name. You never know — they may come back for us.”

Tree of Life

This family tree was created by Mr. Lipschitz ztz”l. During one of our sessions, when we sat together to paint his family tree, I asked him, “What about the roots? Where are your parents and grandparents?”

He answered that they had all been killed — burned in Auschwitz, murdered in the camps. “I survived the concentration camp,” he said. “That’s when my old life ended.” If you look closely at the image, you can find barbed wire with the name of the concentration camp he survived.

On his family tree, one image is a fragment of the Holocaust Memorial sculpture in Miami, and another is a photograph of himself as a young man.

He told me, “Everything was destroyed. I had to start from nothing. I am the new beginning.” After such devastation, he explained, it would have been so much easier not to rebuild a life, not to remain strong, not to create a family. Then he pointed at all the family photos surrounding the tree. “Look at my family now. My parents must be so proud, looking down. Look at this.”

He also often said that it would have been easier not to stay religious — that after everything he had endured, faith was a choice he had to make, not something that came automatically. But he chose it, just as he chose to rebuild, to love, and to create a new future.

“Look at what I’ve built,” he said softly. “This is my family.”

Scratches

This artwork explores inherited trauma, the eagle on the Nazi symbol scratching the surface with its claws. I use bone china, porcelain, clay, and precious metal — materials associated with fragility, value, and the body — to reflect how historical violence embeds itself into family memory.

The scratching represents the psychological wounds transmitted across three generations: grandmother, mother, and daughter. What is carved into the surface becomes impossible to erase, just as trauma persists even when events are no longer visible.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 971)