The son of the DP and artist Pinchas Schuldenrein called us from New Jersey. He had discovered a poster by his father in an article at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and was able to tell us more about his life:
Pinchas Schuldenrein was born in Maków Mazowiecki near Warsaw in 1912 where he studied at the Academy of Arts. After being liberated from Stutthof concentration camp, he was sent to the DP camp in Zeilsheim near Frankfurt. He taught Jewish children in the camps and documented what he had seen and survived in his artworks. He designed posters for the Central Historical Commission and other Jewish organizations such as HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society).
The poster displayed opens with the words “Remember what the Amalek did to you!” In the Hebrew Bible, Amalek is a people that embodies evil par excellence. This is followed by illustrations of four catastrophes: Top right: “Destruction of the House”—this refers to the destruction of the holy tabernacle in Jerusalem by Greek and Roman armies; top left: “Slavery in Egypt,” capturing the time when the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians and forced to work under harsh conditions; bottom right: The expulsion of the Jews during the Spanish Inquisition in 1492; bottom left: The massacres of Polish Jews in 1648/1649, carried out by an army under Bogdan Chmielnicki’s command. The poster ends with the call: “Zamelt un fartseykhent!” (Yiddish: Gather and document).
Pinchas Schuldenrein emigrated to America in 1947. When he gained American citizenship a few years later, he changed his name to Paul Sharon. He worked in New York as a commercial artist until his death in 1998. While still a student, his grandson Jeremy dedicated a website to his grandfather.
With thanks to Pinchas Schuldenrein’s son and grandson for information on Paul Sharon. Further updates will shortly be shown here and in the exhibition. To the exhibition.