Alice Lok Cahana
| Alice Lok Cahana | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 7, 1929 Sárvár, Hungary |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Known for | Holocaust survivor |
| Website |
www |
Alice Lok Cahana (born February 7, 1929, in Sárvár, Hungary) is a Hungarian Holocaust survivor.[1] She was a teenage inmate in the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Guben and Bergen-Belsen camps. She is most well known for her writings and abstract paintings about the Holocaust. Much of her work is a tribute to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg,[2] who saved her father during the war. Alice was liberated from Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945 with her sister Edit who was two years older than her. She was separated from her sister and has spent the rest of her life looking for her.
Art career
Cahana is an abstract painter whose work deals with her experiences during World War II, as a Holocaust survivor of multiple concentration camps. In 2006, her piece "No Names" was added to the Vatican Museum's Collection of Modern Religious Art and since then is on permanent display at the museum in Rome, Italy.[3] Her work appears in multiple prestigious museum collections around the world including Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.
In media
Cahana was one of five Hungarian Holocaust survivors whose story was featured in the Steven Spielberg 1999 Academy Award winning documentary movie, The Last Days.[4] Her writing was featured in The Best Spiritual Writing 2011 [5] She also features in Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. She was photographed in her studio for New York photographer Mark Seliger's book and exhibition "When They Came to Take My Father" [6] and was also written about in Michael Berenbaum's book "A Promise To Remember" as well as in the writings of art critic Barbara Rose.
Personal life
Cahana married Rabbi Moshe Cahana in Israel. They emigrated to Sweden where their first son, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana, was born. They finally settled in Houston where Rabbi Michael Cahana and Rina Cahana were born. She has resided in Houston since 1959.[7]
External links
References
- ↑ Women Artists of The American West, "www.alicelokcahana.com" "Alice Lok Cahana Biography"
- ↑ "Holocaust survivor makes art from her memories"
- ↑ Johnson, Patricia C. "Pope welcomes Holocaust survivor Alice Lok Cahana's No Names painting to Vatican Museum" "The Houston Chronicle", Nov. 9, 2006
- ↑ Holden, Stephen. The Last Days (1998) FILM REVIEW; In Hungary, the Final Days of the 'Final Solution' "The New York Times", February 5, 1999
- ↑ ed. Bill Collins The Best Spiritual Writing 2011
- ↑
- ↑ Hornstein, Shelley; Levitt, Laura; Silberstein, Laurence J., eds. (2003). Impossible Images: Contemporary Art after the Holocaust. New York: New York University Press. p. 263. ISBN 9780814798256. OCLC 51931377.