Tova Berlinski

Tova Berlinski was born in 1915 in Oświęcim

Berlinski was born Gusta Wolf in Oświęcim, Poland, in 1915, the eldest of six children. Her father, Samuel Wolf, owned a furniture store. She met her husband, Elijah, through the Zionist youth movement.

In 1938, shortly after their wedding, the couple came to Mandatory Palestine as illegal immigrants. Her family in Poland was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II. She first worked in theater, and lived in Tel Aviv until 1952 before moving to Jerusalem.

She began painting at 38 and studied at Bezalel in Jerusalem from 1953 to 1957. She then studied in Paris with André Lhote and Henri Goetz, where abstract expressionism influenced her.

Her early work was colorful and abstract, and from the 1970s she dealt directly with the Holocaust. Later she painted closed windows, cypresses, empty chairs, faded family portraits and dark flowers dedicated to her murdered family. She taught at Beit Ha'Am Bezalel from 1965 to 1984 and belonged to the Aklim and Radius groups.

In 1984 she visited Oświęcim for the first time since leaving, and returned many times. Her work was first shown in Poland in 2006. She died in Jerusalem in 2022 at 106 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.