[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 118 (Thursday, July 13, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E981-E982]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   BELOVED: CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE WILSON

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 13, 2017

  Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, on June 18, 2017, The 
State newspaper of Columbia, South Carolina, published a remarkable 
article by John Monk entitled, ``In S.C. artist's portraits, Holocaust 
children live.''
  The following portions of the article reveal how the memories of 
these children are kept alive through an extraordinary heartfelt 
achievement:

       ``I draw their eyes first,'' said Mary Burkett, ``and I 
     reach a moment where I just make some little subtle shading, 
     and all of a sudden, I see the little person, and I just sort 
     of say, `Hey, darling.'
       ``It is so wonderful that they are there. They seem to me 
     as though they are hiding in the paper, and I just reveal 
     them. I just find them.
       Since January, Burkett, 64, of West Columbia, has created 
     19 pastel portraits of children. Using old grainy black and 
     white photos she printed from the Internet, she has spent 
     hours, dabbing on minute amounts of pastel with a Q-tip or a 
     rolled paper stump called a tortillon, creating the pictures 
     on light brown paper.
       She works at home, surrounded by high windows, or on the 
     third floor of the Richland County's main library--both 
     places with natural or bright overhead light. It takes her 25 
     or 30 hours over a week to draw just one image.
       They aren't just any children. They are Jewish children who 
     died in the Holocaust. Their faces exude happiness, though, 
     for the photos that Burkett worked from were taken when the 
     children were with their families, before being sent to the 
     horror of the death camps created by Nazi Germany.
       To those who have seen them, Burkett's portraits radiate 
     life, love and loss, intertwined in a way digital or 
     photographic images can't convey.
       Many viewer tear up. They might have come across photos 
     before of Jewish children killed in Hitler's concentration 
     camps during World War II. But none like Burkett's, they 
     said.
       ``I've never seen anything like it, personally,'' said 
     Barry Abels, executive director of the Columbia Jewish 
     Federation. ``Something gets yanked right out of me when I 
     look at these pictures.''
       Abels heard about Burkett's portraits. After showing them 
     to some friends, he invited her to Holocaust Remembrance Day 
     at Columbia's Tree of Life Synagogue in April. She set up a 
     table, and people dropped by to see her sketches, still in 
     her sketch book.
       ``Everybody was amazed,'' Abels said. ``The images jump out 
     of the paper. She had captured the essence of the children. 
     `Remarkable' was a word I heard more than once . . .''
       Because of the positive reactions from others, Burkett has 
     made her goal with the pictures to share them with others in 
     a way that lets others learn their stories . . .
       Burkett showed her first portrait, of Hersch Goldberg, to 
     her husband of 40 years, Ronny. He liked what she had done, 
     encouraged her to continue, and advised her that if she felt 
     she had to do the portraits, she should continue.
       ``I started looking for pictures of children from the 
     Holocaust, wanting their pictures to be from the 1930s, 
     before the Holocaust happened. The reason for that is, they 
     were children. They laughed, and they cried, and they fussed, 
     and they giggled, and they ran, all the things that kids 
     do.''
       Back then, Burkett said, cameras were a novelty and 
     children didn't make faces when you took their picture. 
     ``Whatever emotion they were feeling, is actually on their 
     little faces . . .''
       Belinda Gergel, a Burkett friend and retired history 
     professor at Columbia College who now lives in Charleston, 
     said, ``Quite frankly, these drawings are about as powerful 
     as they could be.''
       ``Mary has a gift, and it's a gift that transcends time, 
     and it brings the past right back into the present,'' Gergel 
     said. ``When you look at these drawings, you are confronting 
     the central question about human experience: How could we 
     have lost these very special children?''
       Gergel, Hamm, Abels and Filler all hope Burkett can find a 
     way to share what she's done with wider audiences.
       Whatever happens, Burkett doesn't want herself to be the 
     focus of attention.

[[Page E982]]

       ``All the power resides in the children. I don't think it's 
     my drawing at all,'' she said.

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