Nelly great

Nelly Toll (née Miese, born 1935 in Lwów , Poland ) is a Jewish Holocaust survivor, artist, author and former lecturer in literature and art.

Life

Nelly Toll was a daughter of the wealthy Jewish Miese family. When the Soviet Union occupied eastern Galicia in 1939, her father had to go into hiding to prevent an impending evacuation to Siberia. In 1941 the German Wehrmacht occupied Lwów and Nelly and her family had to move to the ghetto . Her brother, who was only five years old, was abducted and murdered by the Germans. Nelly and her mother Rozia joined a group who tried to flee across the border to Hungary, but they did not succeed. In 1943 the father found a hiding place for Nelly (then eight years old) and the mother with a befriended Catholic family. In the hiding place, a small room, the mother encouraged the daughter to draw and write in order to distract herself. Nelly Toll wrote a diary and painted with watercolors. Sixty picture books were created that illustrate the girl's dreams and longings for a normal, carefree life. “You don't see anything of war anywhere. Not from terror and fear. They're just kids, and I guess I imagined that one day I'd go to school too. I've called them my watercolor friends. I even talked to them, ”Nelly Toll later said about her pictures.

In 1944 the city of Lwów was liberated by the Red Army and mother and daughter were able to leave their hiding place. They learned that they were the only survivors in the family. They then emigrated to the USA in 1951, where Nelly continued to paint, write articles and books, and lectured on literature and art at various universities. Her dissertation “Integrating Holocaust art and aesthetics into the curriculum” deals with the topic of how art can be used as a bridge in Holocaust education for schoolchildren. She now lives in Vorhees, New Jersey with her husband Ervin Toll .

Publications

• Behind the secret window. A Memoir of A Hidden Childhood During World War II , Puffin Books, ISBN 978-0142302415
• When Memory Speaks. The Holocaust in Art , Greenwood Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0275955342
• Without surrender. Art of the Holocaust , Running Press, 1978, ISBN 978-0894710551

Exhibitions

Nelly Toll's childhood watercolor paintings are on permanent display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and are part of the Illinois Holocaust Education Center's collection. Her works can also be seen in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

Further exhibitions:

• 2014: Imagining a Better World: The Artwork of Nelly Toll. Massillon Museum.
• 2016: Art from the Holocaust. 100 works from the Yad Vashem Memorial. (Group exhibition with works by Nelly Toll and others) Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin.

Web links

• Nelly Toll's homepage
• Homepage about a planned documentary about Nelly Toll's life

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "I painted in the hope of a better world" , picture article from January 24, 2016, accessed on February 3, 2016.
2. ↑ Angela Merkel opens Holocaust art show with warning on antisemitism , Guardian article from January 26, 2016, accessed on February 4, 2016.
3. ^ "Art from the Holocaust" in Berlin. Wasserfarben-Freunde und other miracles , Deutschlandfunk report from January 25, 2016, accessed on February 3, 2016.
4. ↑ Patricia Heberer: Children during the Holocaust, p. 320. AltaMira Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0759119840 .
5. ↑ 'Art From the Holocaust': The Beauty and Brutality in Forbidden Works , article in the New York Times, January 22, 2016, accessed February 3, 2016.