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Art created by survivors of the Holocaust is becoming more important as time passes and fewer survivors remain. Sometimes that art shows up in surprising places and is only saved if someone is aware of its significance. Shanna Lewis with member station KRCC reports on a painting that was nearly lost in Colorado.
SHANNA LEWIS, BYLINE: Six years ago, Bonnie Waugh was leafing through some items left over from a church garage sale.
BONNIE WAUGH: There were these large clear folders that had housed artwork from a place that did framing.
LEWIS: Waugh is an artist in Pueblo, Colorado.
WAUGH: In that were old posters, original artwork, things that probably needed to be thrown away, but there was one piece that was very haunting.
LEWIS: In the painting, rows and rows of gaunt faces look directly into a viewer's eyes - men, women, and children, most dressed in the striped uniforms worn by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
WAUGH: It was dark and very hard to look at for too long because it just brought up a ton of emotion.
LEWIS: Translucent Hebrew lettering hangs over the anguished and sad but defiant faces. It says Kiddush Hashem - to the sanctification of the name of God - words often used to refer to martyrs or those who died simply because they were Jewish. Waugh had a feeling the painting was important, so she rescued it from the unsold pile from the garage sale. It was signed by the late Jacob Barosin, a Jewish Holocaust survivor. After she connected with his family, they arranged for it to become part of the collection at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Peter Garik is Barosin's stepson.
PETER GARIK: He was saved multiple times by the righteous gentiles, so I think he would be thrilled about the Museum of the Bible.
LEWIS: In a video on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, Jacob Barosin recalled one of those times after he had escaped a Nazi labor camp in France and a teacher at a Christian school hid him and his wife in an attic.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JACOB BAROSIN: She hesitated for a second, thinking of her family and the dangers of hiding a Jewish couple. But she answered, I think it is my Christian duty.
LEWIS: Barosin and his wife read a Bible the teacher gave them as they hid silently in the attic. After the war, they moved to New York where he made a living as an illustrator and courtroom artist. But he also produced scenes from his experiences in Europe during the war. Here he is talking about a sketch very similar to the one Bonnie Waugh rescued from the church sale discard pile.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BAROSIN: This is not a document of gas chambers, of mass graves and death. It is a statement of love for our people.
LEWIS: Amy Van Dyke is a curator at the Museum of the Bible.
AMY VAN DYKE: Those voices are rapidly being lost to history. Thankfully, we have places like the Holocaust Museum and we have others that are championing these voices, but we want to be a part of that, and we're honored to be a part of that, to have this voice, something that we can preserve for the future.
LEWIS: Van Dyke doesn't know when the painting will go on display but in the meantime promises to keep it safe. For NPR News, I'm Shanna Lewis in Pueblo, Colorado.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEAN CARNE, ADRIAN YOUNGE AND ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD SONG, "VISIONS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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