The Rescuers

The museum collection includes a piece of contemporary art donated by its author, Gabriella Y. Karin (b. 1930) from Los Angeles. The artwork depicts three frightened Jewish girls hidden during the Holocaust by the Catholic nuns of the Ursuline convent in central Bratislava. The drama of the experience is expressed through the sharp contrast between the threatening black background and the group of female figures in the foreground. The darkness, symbolizing persecution, fear and death, is firmly contrasted with the light of hope, moral strength and courage represented by the nuns, who saved others’ lives at the risk of losing their own. Gabriella Y. Karin was born in Bratislava and lived with her parents on Špitálska Street, where the family owned a small delicatessen. In 1941, before the deportations of Jews began, she was hidden at the Ursuline boarding school and remained there for three years. In August 1944, together with her parents, she went into hiding in the apartment of a young lawyer, Karol Blanár, who provided refuge for eight Jews until the liberation of the city. Karin has been living for decades in the United States, yet she is unable to forget either these memories or her sense of gratitude towards her rescuers. Karol Blanár and his parents, Vincent and Katarína, were in 2006 posthumously declared Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. [LH]

Gabriella Y. Karin, 2012
Clay, plexiglass
Height: 48 cm, width: 48 cm
Donated by Gabriella Y. Karin
ŽM-D 1633 A-47