Rivke Berger (1911-1942). We're Breaking the Wall.
(Image courtesy of The "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre" Center, Lublin, Poland)
During the 1930s, the Y.L. Peretz School in Lublin, Poland – part of a worldwide network of secular Yiddish-language schools – was home to a remarkable artist/teacher and five children who were likely inspired by her example. The artist was Rivke Berger, a tantalizing figure whose work survives only indirectly in the Yiddish and Polish press. The children created an album (1937) of illustrations to Sholem Aleichem’s Motl, Peysi the Cantor’s Son. The relationship between these children and Rivke Berger is undocumented, but she was probably their teacher; she may well have been involved with their project.
The Lublin Peretz School that Berger and the children knew. A planned move to a more modern facility was derailed by the Second World War. (Image courtesy of The "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre" Center, Lublin, Poland)
Berger received her first-ever solo show in 2019 at Lublin’s “Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre” Center, using images from the historical press (1). In summer 2023, the Center also exhibited reproductions of the children’s Motl album (it belongs to YIVO in New York). The two exhibitions provide a glimpse of lively artistic life at the Peretz School toward the end of its existence.
Top: the Rivke Berger exhibition (2019). Bottom: the Motl album exhibition (2023).
(Images courtesy of The "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre" Center, Lublin, Poland)
Both exhibitions were organized by Piotr Nazaruk, the Grodzka Gate Center’s curator, and art historian Agnieszka Wiśniewska. The Center – which celebrates Lublin’s rich multicultural past – is housed in the historic Gate, which once separated Lublin’s Jewish quarter from the rest of the city. Exhibitions of Jewish artists are essential to the Center's mission.
Grodzka Gate today.
(Image courtesy of The "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre" Center, Lublin, Poland)
The main source for Rivke Berger’s life is in Yiddish: Yoysef Sandel’s Umgekumene yidishe kinstler in Poyln (Jewish Artists in Poland Who Perished; Warsaw, 1957). She was born in Lublin in 1911 to a poor family: her father, Yankl, was a shoemaker. Through her mother, Sure Łaja, she was related to the famous Yiddish poet, Jacob Glatstein.
According to Sandel, she studied art in Lublin and Krakow, but dropped her studies when she was hired as a drawing teacher at the Peretz School. She painted in oils and sketched avidly in ink and pencil; but she was primarily a specialist in woodcuts and linocuts. The Bundist publication Vokhnshrift far literatur, kunst un kultur (Weekly for Literature, Art and Culture), published a number of her works in 1933 and 1934. A list of her Yiddish and Polish press appearances is here (scroll down). None of her original works in any medium are known to survive.
Her striking prints, with strong black-and-white contrasts and dynamically expressive lines, often portrayed the dire hunger and unemployment in 1930s Lublin (see Bread! Bread! and Out of Work). Pieces like Demonstration show her concern for workers’ rights. We’re Breaking the Wall (above) – inspired by Avrom Reyzen’s radical poem, Di Vant (The Wall) – is her most overtly Bundist statement. She was also attuned to the growing threat of Nazism: her 1933 The Pyres Are Burning (subtitled Autodafe – a word from the Spanish Inquisition) chillingly references burnings of Jewish-authored books in Germany.
Top to bottom: Rivke Berger (1911-1942). Bread! Bread!; Out of Work; Demonstration; The Pyres Are Burning (Autodafe). (Images courtesy of The "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre" Center, Lublin, Poland)
Berger was a sensitive interpreter of the architecture of Lublin’s Podzamcze Jewish quarter. A few of her views are identifiable, but most can’t be linked to known locations. They show characteristic corners of the Jewish neighborhood as she both saw and imagined them. She also charmingly illustrated literary works by Y.L. Peretz and Sholem Aleichem for the Yiddish press.
Top to bottom: Rivke Berger (1911-1942). Two views of Lublin's Jewish quarter; illustration of The Messenger, by Y.L. Peretz; illustration of Tevye the Milkman, by Sholem Aleichem,
(Images courtesy of The "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre" Center, Lublin, Poland)
She spent time in 1936 at Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains, where she recorded life in (lost) sketches among the Goral highlanders.
During the war, Berger worked at CENTOS (the Jewish orphans’ organization). She was murdered either in the liquidation of the Lublin Ghetto or at Bełżec in 1942, aged 31.
There’s no documented link between Berger and the illustrations of Sholem Aleichem’s Motl made by pupils at the Peretz School; but it’s suggestive that she did a woodcut of Motl playing with the calf, Meni. Yoysef Sandel describes how much Berger loved her Peretz students and admired their talents. She must at least have been aware of the children’s Motl project.
Rivke Berger (1911-1942). Motl & Meni, from Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son, by Sholem Aleichem.
(Image courtesy of The "Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre" Center, Lublin, Poland)
No evidence survives about how or why these children made their Motl album (incomplete, for unknown reasons) (2). Of course they knew the story well as students at a Yiddish-language school. All five were in sixth grade (around 13 years old): Fayge Turner did the drawings; Hentshe Greberman wrote the Yiddish captions; Sender Finkelshtayn, Fayge Dorfman and Tobe Felman assisted. Turner and Dorfman were last documented in Lublin in 1940 or 1941; Felman was deported to Siedliszcze. Greberman and Finkelshtayn can’t be traced.
Probably a teacher at the Peretz School – perhaps Rivke Berger – sent the children’s album to YIVO in Vilnius, likely for safekeeping as the Jewish situation deteriorated. It now belongs to YIVO in New York. The whole album can be seen **HERE** (PDF from YIVO's website).
In 1936, the year before the Motl project, Fayge Turner – the future illustrator – wrote a letter about the Peretz School to the Lubliner Shtime (Lublin Voice). “The teachers,” she wrote, “are very dear to me…While others are enjoying the summer, I will be dreaming about the teachers and children. I will miss our school so much.” Perhaps one of these beloved teachers was Rivke Berger?
Fayge’s words hang portentously given what was to come. But thanks to YIVO and the Grodzka Gate Center, her illustrations offer precious testimony to the joy, creativity and beauty of these young Jewish lives.
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(1) In 2015, Karolina Szymaniak assembled a collection of Rivke Berger images from the press for the website of the Jewish Historical Institute's Central Judaica Library (Warsaw, Poland). The collection shows how Berger's works looked as press clippings with Yiddish text around them.
(2) It's possible that the children created their album in response to the 1937 TSYShO exhibition on Sholem-Aleichem. Thanks to Karolina Szymaniak for this suggestion.