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Barbara Shilo was born in Germany and was a young child when Hitler came to power. She remembers as life changed in her town: Jewish children were forbidden from attending school, and adults whispered about arrests and torture.Alerted by warnings from Christian friends, Barbara's family moved to Czechoslovakia, although there too the majority of the population was fiercely pro-Nazi. After her father was arrested at the Czech border while returning from a trip to Germany, and his car was confiscated, her parents knew it was time to leave the country. In 1938, the family escaped to the United States, where her mother's family had been living for many years.
It was yet more years before they learned that none of the family that remained in Europe had survived the Holocaust. Some cousins had earlier emigrated to Palestine.
After attending university, Barbara continued to study and create art. For many years she painted numerous subjects and had exhibitions throughout the country. But when images of the Holocaust surfaced from her unconscious, she felt it imperative to somehow represent this tragedy in her work. Documentary photographs from the archives of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum were her primary resource for translating the images into an art form. She multiplied the images, as if these portraits in multiples had a better chance of survival. She cut, shaped, and added color to the black-and-white photographs to make them more immediate and real.
Shilo states: "I know my painting is 'unreal'—only a replica, of sorts—but the events I portray were real, terribly real. I hope I have been able through my paintings to give the viewer a sense of the horror visited upon these millions of people. I hope to give them back their individuality by recreating their images on paper and canvas, and in this way to preserve and honor their blessed memory."
