Pinchas Shaar photographs

Artist Pinchas Shaar (1923‐1996) was born Pinchas Szwarc in 1923 in Łódź to carpenter and lumberyard owner Jakub Szwarc (1892‐?) and Chaja Fajga Szwarc (nee Zychlinska, 1892‐?). He had two brothers, Josef and Lajb, and a sister, Ester Ita. When Germany invaded Poland, Pinchas escaped with his brothers and headed east to Soviet occupied Poland, but the three returned to the Łódź ghetto to protect their family. Pinchas worked in a factory, for the health department, and for the statistical office. When the Germans liquidated the ghetto in 1944, Pinchas, his brothers, and his father were selected for transport to Koenigs Wusterhausen, a sub camp of Sachenshausen. Pinchas was then sent to either the Kelterborn & Stenvers factory or the Stenvers labor camp. The camp was liberated by Soviet forces in 1945, and Pinchas and his family were reunited and returned to Łódź in May. They learned that his sister and her child had been killed in a concentration camp. Pinchas chose to leave Poland and was hospitalized at a sanatorium in Gauting, Germany, where he credits a nurse with reviving his interest in art and in life by bringing him art supplies. Pinchas left the sanatorium for Munich and then for Paris in 1947, where he continued to develop his artistic vision. He joined his family in Israel in 1953 and then moved to New York in 1975.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Judith M. Shaar

Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Judith Shaar donated the Pinchas Shaar photographs to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 and 2006. The accession previously numbered 2006.157.1 has been incorporated into this collection.