Shelomo

Shelomo Selinger

Shelomo was born in 1928 in a small town in Silesia, Poland. Deported in 1942, he survived nine concentration camps and two death marches, losing his parents and his little sister Rosa. After the war, he went through a seven-year period of amnesia. He knew he had been deported, but could not say where or when, as if his mind made him forget in order to give him time to rebuild himself. In 1946, he left for Israel, where he met Ruth, whom he married in 1954. That’s when his memory returned. Already a sculptor, he fashioned a small figure for her on the day they met. In 1955, they both moved to Paris, where he joined the Beaux-Arts in order to make his art his profession. In 1973, he entered an international sculpture competition for the Drancy Memorial. Out of 70 anonymous submissions, the jurors unanimously chose Shelomo’s sculptures. The jurors had no idea the sculptures they chose had been made by a former deportee. This recognition gave him a new meaning to his life; beyond the guilt he felt at being the only survivor of his family. Whenever he recalls a scene from the camps, he feels the need to draw it. In his studio, there are countless drawings, some of the most moving I've ever seen. They include the murder of his father and the time when Shelomo was given up for dead, piled up on a heap of corpses. Shelomo and Ruth share the same love they felt when they first met. They now have three children and eleven grandchildren.