'Remembering Vilna': Polk Museum of Art features works by Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak

LAKELAND – As the generations pass and the memories begin to fade, it will be literature and works of art by artists such as Samuel Bak that help keep the Holocaust at the forefront of historical notoriety.

Staff at the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College have installed the latest exhibition, “Remembering Vilna: The Holocaust and the Art of Samuel Bak” in the Dorothy Jenkins Gallery. From Saturday through Jan. 7, visitors will be able to see about 30 of Bak’s oil paintings relating to what Alex Rich, PMA executive director and chief curator, called “timeless themes of persecution, crisis, bigotry and war.”

Bak, 89, was born in 1933 in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania) and was a child just prior to the onset of the Holocaust. He lived his young life through the Soviet and Nazi occupation of his hometown as well as the Vilna Ghetto and forced labor camps — at one time hiding from the Nazis in a convent.

His first painting exhibition was organized in the ghetto when he was 9 years old. After Vilna’s liberation in 1944, he developed his draftsmanship and painting skills through private art lessons and work at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is one of the few survivors left of Holocaust-era Vilna and lives and works in Weston, Massachusetts.

Rich, PMA curator since 2017, said museum staff saw a Bak exhibition at the Pucker Gallery in Boston in 2018 and through a collaboration with the gallery, worked to bring “Remembering Vilna” to Lakeland. He said it’s the first time the museum has featured Bak’s works, and for most visitors, it will be their “first entrance into the world of Bak and his reflections and experiences in the Holocaust.”

“We hope that visitors to the exhibition gain insight not only into the history of the Holocaust, but also into their own lives and the world we live in today. Sadly, the show’s themes of persecution, bigotry, conflict, crisis and war are both timeless and timely, with echoes to this very day,” Rich said.

In his works, Bak often uses his artistic expression to highlight the destruction and dehumanization of the Holocaust era that make up much of his childhood memories. With his brush, he highlights the atrocities of the Holocaust, yet doesn’t limit his art to the post-Holocaust genre.

In a written statement, Bernard Pucker, gallery owner and director of the Pucker Gallery, said Bak’s art is a reminder of the atrocities of a not-too-distant time and the importance of interacting to avoid them again.

“Bak’s art featured in the Polk Museum of Art exhibition challenges us to reflect on the horrors of the recent past as an effective stimulus for profound discussions of our responsibilities to others and the whole world,” he said.

Rich said his hopes for the exhibition in addition to seeing Bak’s artistry, is visitors will leave impacted by his talents.

“Anyone coming to the museum to see Bak’s work and its reflections on the atrocities of the past will be pushed importantly to reckon with the ways in which we grapple with and treat people who are different from us,” he said.

'Eye-opening experience' Theater group brings beloved 'West Side Story' to Lakeland stage

If you go

WHAT: Remembering Vilna: The Holocaust and the Art of Samuel Bak

WHEN: Saturday to Jan. 7

WHERE: The Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College, 800 E. Palmetto St., Lakeland

COST: Free

INFO: 863-688-7743; www.polkmuseumofart.org

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak's paintings on display at Polk Museum