Carolyn Polak, granddaughter of Jo Spier (1900 – 1978) the Dutch-Jewish painter, gave our archives, through her friend Nira Friedmann, an album with the memories of her grandmother Albertine Sophie Spier-Van Raalte, Jo Spier’s wife. Albertine, who celebrated her 80^th birthday in January 1987, created the album and gave it to Carolyn as a present.

The album shows through photographs and text the story of 4 generations of the Spier family. At first we get to know Spier’s childhood in Holland, his parents Isidor and Celine and his two brothers Eduard and Fritz and learn that since age nine he dreamed to be a painter.

Spier and Albertine met when she was 16 years old, in the seventh grade of high school. He proposed to marry her and indeed, when she was 18 they married (1925).

At that time Spier worked for the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf as illustrator and comic’s artist, until 1939. Albertine was aware of her calling in life – she became an exemplary housewife. Three children were born to them: Peter (1927), Celine (1929) and Thomas (1931)


 

 

The happy life of the Spier family with their 3 children, in Amsterdam, was interrupted when Spier was arrested by the Germans. The reason: the comics figure of Hitler drawn by Spier, published much earlier. Spier was sent to camp Westerbork in Holland; there he decorated the children’s sick room with his wonderful drawings. From Westerbork he was sent on April 21, 1943, to Theresienstadt, where he remained until the end of the war. In the ghetto he worked at the Technical Department and drew with his light hand pictures of ghetto scenes. But, like other painters, he was forced to paint to order and for the needs of the German commanders. So he also became one of the co-workers of Kurt Gerron in the preparation of the Nazi propaganda film. Spier made 300 sketches of scenes of the film “Theresienstadt” while the shooting was going on, in various places - work in vegetable gardens, workshops, a soccer game and the “bank of the Jewish self-administration”.

These sketches are a visual diary, a primary source for the reconstruction of the film; though some of them depict everyday situations in the ghetto. Such pictures are displayed in various exhibitions in Beit Terezin.

 

After liberation the Spier family began to re-build their life in Holland and in 1951 the family immigrated to America.