Elżbieta Nadel's "Pictures at Home" Museum of the history of Polish Jews

The portfolio of Elżbieta Nadel, "Pictures at home. 18 sketches from nature, Lviv July 1942" consists of the title page, 18 drawings made in black ink with numbers and captions, and an unnumbered drawing "Apartment plan / scale 1:66".

The fate of Lviv Jews under the German occupation creates a historical frame, and determines the time and place in which Elżbieta Nadel created her drawn diary. The visual narrative is conducted from her point of view, others are the heroes of the second (a cat) or far-away (parents and brother) plan. Elizabeth's life is enclosed within the family circle, in the temporariness of the house, in almost complete isolation from the outside world. The only reference to the reality outside are patients' visits (the woman in the waiting room wears an armband with the Star of David, fig. 9), because the author's father still ordains, although neither the "waiting room" enclosed in quotation marks, nor the office separated by a curtain have much in common with the pre-war medical practice (fig. 9, 10). This family home, although elsewhere than before the war (suitcases remind of the resettlement, fig. 13, 18), a fragile asylum in the reality of the occupation, is a place where the family is still together, and with it Elizabeth's closest companion – the cat.

In the face of mortal threat, Elizabeth's only weapons against despair and fear became a pen, brush and ink, as well as tragic-ironic humor, stressed by humorous titles and commentaries to the drawings. It serves to build a distance to reality, to tame horror, and not to give up. Is the recurring, superficially humorous image of housing realities (e.g. in the scene of sleep and awakening, fig. 4, 5), in which there is no chance for a moment of isolation, and where the confined space enforces closeness (fig. 7), not a dream, and not only about the past, but also for a moment of loneliness now? (fig. 17). In the prosaic, yet majestic "daily stroll..." to the toilet, Elżbieta emphasises the contrast between her own elegance and proud attitude and the dirty surroundings (Fig. 11). Although the drawings are emotional, the nightmare of life in the ghetto, hunger and death, everyday life, full of violence and cruelty, do not touch them. For the author the door and the window are the impassable boundaries; we cannot see what is going on outside. The "great narratives" of the Holocaust – hunger, violence and genocide – do not have access to Elizabeth's world.

RP