Private Collection. One of the main themes I have addressed as an artist is the legacy of the Holocaust. As an aspect of that work, I planned a set of eight portraits of Jewish families victimized by the Nazis. I chose to work from photographs taken before the 1930s, showing the richness and normalcy of the Eastern and Central European Jewish life and culture that was subsequently destroyed. But I was unable to accomplish what I had set out to do; I succeeded in depicting neither the depth of the culture nor the family members without death in their eyes. Finally, I could not bear to paint them at all. I was negating my desire to celebrate a culture. I could only mourn it. The Zima family had owned a paint and hardware store in the center of Węgrow, Poland, about 50 miles south of Warsaw on the Bug river. The Nazis invaded up the Bug river in 1939. The eldest Zima son, Chaim Wolf, who had emigrated to the United States by then, was the only survivor. It was his daughter who gave me a copy of the 1920s family photograph from which this painting was done. The precise fate of the rest of the Zima family is unknown, but by one account, they fled into the forest and were killed by gunfire. Many in the area were taken to the death camp at Treblinka. I finished this portrait in 1996 and was unable to take up oil painting or portrait work again until 2001.