Malka Pishanitskaya was 10 years old when the Nazis invaded Ukraine. She survived two mass executions, time in jail and four years of hiding. Memories of her struggle and the horrors she personally witnessed are vividly expressed in bold, colorful artworks that fill her combined living and dining room.
When Jewish Independent editor Basya Laye and I visited Malka earlier this year, we were literally surrounded by the visual representations of these memories, which were propped against a chair and in front of the couch and leaning against the wall; in certain parts of the room, paintings were three or four deep.
“I’m calling it a second chapter, the next chapter, because the most important [thing] to me is to show how I survived the first [and] the second mass execution and one imprisonment. So, miracles. Everything, every story is going to show a miracle, explained Malka about the artwork.
 Malka Pishanitskaya is working towards documenting her Holocaust experience in a series of collages. |