Ana Zlatkes, a well known and prize winning textile artist who has exhibited internationally, first encountered arpilleras at an international exhibition at the Womens Museum in Fürth, Germany in May 2009. She subsequently attended arpillera workshops facilitated by Roberta Bacic and has become a passionate proponent of the arpillera mode of expression.
Here, Ana depicts both the genocide inflicted by the Nazi regime on Jews during the second world war and the courageous work of those who led children to safety, in effect “stitching” a new life for them. In her view the theme of genocide is universal and current: “Genocide continues, changes in form and geographical location, but it is still a reality and it is the responsibility of all of us to try to prevent it.”
This arpillera, as well as honouring those who resisted the repressive regime, has undoubtedly changed the artist: “… this is my first homage to all the men and women who have had the courage to fight defending the lives of children. Today after making this arpillera I am not the same, something has happened in me and my life.”
Irena Sendler, a social worker, was one such woman who resisted the regime. Between 1942 and 1943, working through the Polish underground, she led hundreds of Jewish children out of the Ghetto to safe hiding places.
Nicholas Winton, who worked on the London stock exchange, was instrumental in arranging for 669 children to leave Czechoslovakia at the beginning of the war. Vera Gissing, one of the children saved by Winton later commented: "He rescued the greater part of the Jewish children of my generation in Czechoslovakia. Very few of us met our parents again: they perished in concentration camps. Had we not been spirited away, we would have been murdered alongside them."
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