Flowers in a Vase

Flowers in a Vase is a collage of coloured paper scraps and tempera paint on ledger paper made by Kitty Passerova as a child aged 11 or 12 in Theresienstadt ghetto-concentration camp, circa 1942.

Whilst living in the girl’s barracks in Theresienstadt, Kitty and other young children received art lessons from Friedl Dicker Brandeis, an artist and textile designer who had studied at the Bauhaus school in Germany. Friedl encouraged children in the ghetto to create art as a way to enrich their lives and to help them find beauty in their gloomy surroundings. On 6 October 1944, Friedl was transported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered two days later. Kitty survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Australia after the war.

In 1997 former Prime Minister Paul Keating assisted in repatriating her collage to Australia. Kitty Levy (nee Passerova) subsequently donated it to the Sydney Jewish Museum in 2005.