The 2023 photographs presented in this issue of the Maine Arts Journal are my photographic response to stumbling upon a portrait stenciled on a Parisian yellow mailbox. Walking casually on the Île Saint-Louis, I spotted and immediately recognized the work of French street artist, Christian Guémy, aka C215. Barely able to contain my excitement I literally ran to it for an up-close look. There, before me, was the face of Denise Szternszuss, age fourteen, a star of David on her coat.
Who was this child? What was her portrait telling me?
So overwhelmed by this chance meeting, not realizing that the C215 exhibit at the Mémorial de la Shoah I’d seen stenciled on the mailbox had ended, I went to the museum and was given a map of the seven new mailboxes in the Marais. Totally unprepared emotionally for the photographic adventure that followed, and with my newly acquired pixel 6 smartphone tucked in my pocket, I began my search.
Ruth Sylmor, Bernard Zylberberg, Age 13, giclée print, 10 x 10 in., Paris, IVe arrondissement, 2023.
The photographs displayed in this issue are divided into two sections. In the first part the journey of portraits gives a face and a history to children of the Shoah. They acknowledge the humanity of the innocent children rounded up from where they lived and attended school, herded into closed cattle cars, deported by train, alone or with their family—a journey of three days and two nights—to transit camps or to the Polish death camp, Auschwitz, where the majority were assassinated.
Ruth Sylmor, Paulette Hiller, Age 14, and Emmanuel Hiller, Age 7, giclée print, 10 x 10 in., Paris, IVe arrondissement, 2023.
SRuth Sylmor, Maurice Zeliszewski, Age 17, giclée print, 10 x 10 in., Paris, IVe arrondissement, 2023.
Photographing their faces I began to feel these children were my own. Their smiles became a part of my life. I developed a relationship with them. Did they have a sense of freedom in Paris, a new beginning after fleeing the antisemitism and pogroms in Austria, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Romania, and Germany? A parent myself, I thought of their parents proudly taking photographs of their children in their new world—the emotion, the hope felt in that moment of joy and peace when the shutter clicked.
Ruth Sylmor, Aline Zaydman, Age 8, giclée print, 10 x 10 in., Paris, IVe arrondissement, 2023.
What had influenced C215? How did he come to collaborate with Serge Klarsfeld, the 88-year-old French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust, to choose fourteen photographs from the over 500 Klarsfeld had collected in the Marais quarter alone—those children never to return, never seen again.
Ruth Sylmor, Bernard Schainer, Age 17, giclée print, 10 x 10 in., Paris, IVe arrondissement, 2023.
How does one absorb the history of the Shoah? (In English the Hebrew word Shoah means catastrophe.) Could I imagine, could I begin to understand . . . me, a Jewish woman whose grandparents were American born . . . the horror of the Holocaust?
Photography is a deeply reflective process. Was it a fluke, a stroke of luck to find Denise’s portrait? Perhaps good fortune or as many photographers might say, “I was in the right place at the right time.” I felt the desire to present the real message communicated behind the photographs, the brutal killings, as opposed to the actual subject in front of the camera. But portraits, like LIFE, cannot be reduced easily to formulae.
Inspired by C215’s stencils, my eyes and mind opened to life’s complexity. His portraits gave me the opportunity, motivated me to explore Paris‘ history throughout World War II. Slowly I became aware that beneath the glamor of the fashion industry, the architecture, the museums, la haute cuisine, and delicious food courts that Paris delightfully touts to her tourists today, lies the hidden history of the city’s Jewish neighborhood in the Marais known as the Pletzl—Yiddish for little place. Paris during the Vichy regime (10 July 1940–9 August 1944, when the French government was under the orders of Adolph Hitler), was a city when many Parisians keenly adapted themselves, even allied themselves with their Nazi overlord.
In the second part, in contrast to C215’s portraits of child victims, my series of candid 2023 photographs depicts non-restricted Parisian life today, a moving and joyful celebration of not only survival but also resilience. It is the City of Lights where Jewish people are free to gather and play, reflect and remember the chilling history of the Holocaust—that it not be forgotten or repeated.
Ruth Sylmor, Rives de la Seine, giclée print, 10 x 8 in., Paris, 2023.
Ruth Sylmor, Jardin de l’Hôtel de Sens, giclée print, 10 x 12 in., Paris, 2023.
Ruth Sylmor, Rue des Hospitalières Saint-Gervais, giclée print, 12 x 10 in., Paris, 2023.
Ruth Sylmor, Pont Louis-Philippe, giclée print, 12 x 14 in., Paris, 2023.
Ruth Sylmor, Rue Clovis, giclée print 14 x 12 in., Paris, 2023.
Ruth Sylmor, Rue des Deux-Ponts, giclée print, 12 x 14 in., Paris, 2023.
Slymor’s photographs are part of an exhibition, Marais Children of the Shoah & Aujourd’hui à Paris, on view at the Maine Jewish Museum, Portland (29 August–1 November 2024).
Note: For the readers interested in the work of Parisian street artist Christian Guémy (b. 1973), whose moniker is C215, you can find his website here and Instagram feed here. For an interview in English, click here. The exhibition mentioned in this essay was titled 11400 enfants—Portraits par C215 (11400 Children—Portraits by C215) and took place at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, 16 June–1 December 2022. For a press release (in French), click here.
—Véronique Plesch
Image at top: Ruth Sylmor, Denise Szternszuss, Age 14, giclée print, 10 x 10 in., Paris, IVe arrondissement, 2023.