Pardes’ students memorialize ‘resistors’ in permanent art exhibit

Pardes' students stands in front of their permanent artwork on Wednesday, Feb. 22.

Pardes Jewish Day School has a challenging, but very exciting, decision to make by the end of the school year. After about 18 months of work, "Resistors in Color," the eighth-grade class’ artistic composition, which showcases many of the brave souls who not only resisted but fought back against Nazis, is complete and ready for a permanent home.

On Wednesday, Feb. 22, the artists’ parents, along with the broader community, were invited to the unveiling of the piece — eight colorful glass panels set in a custom wooden frame 9 1/2 feet tall by 6 1/2 feet wide and sitting atop curved wooden legs.

The enormous artwork is currently housed on the bimah in the sanctuary of the Scottsdale day school, but only for now. By the end of the year, Pardes’ administration, with input from teachers and students, will decide on its final locale. It is the first student artwork to have a permanent installation in the school's history.

As grand as the faux-stained-glass work is, it wasn't the only art on display in Wednesday evening's exhibit "Upstanders in Color." The sixth-grade class also showed their Holocaust-inspired artwork based on upstanders, people who rescued and actively saved those persecuted under Germany's Nazi regime.

The evening included brief remarks by a Holocaust survivor, Marion Weinzweig, and a second-generation survivor, Ettie Zilber. The artwork was accompanied by handouts containing the image of each piece, names of the artists and QR codes, so that people could learn more about the work.

Wednesday represented the culmination of months and months of preparation that began with an $11,300 project-focused learning initiative grant from Facing History and Ourselves, a global nonprofit whose mission statement is "to use lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate."

The grant stipulates that the project must tell stories about the Holocaust using an artistic lens.

Hannah Carter, left, and Sarah Ettinger, right, led the "Resistors in Color" project from the beginning.

"We applied with fingers crossed and received a very nice grant," said Sarah Ettinger, eighth-grade humanities teacher, who led the project in partnership with art teacher Hannah Carter.

Their challenge was to use the funds in a way that would represent the school and the community with lasting artwork.

Alison Hurwitz-Kelman, a Facing History representative who came to Wednesday's exhibit, believes they met and even surpassed that challenge.

"They chose to amplify voices that can't speak for themselves, and this school looks like the model for what it looks like to amplify that voice in your own way," she said.

Formal Holocaust education begins in sixth grade at Pardes, when students learn about upstanders. For this project, kids chose an upstander by using the Yad Vashem Archive to find biographical information, details about those saved and any existing photographs.

The eighth-graders started on their masterpiece unwittingly while in seventh grade, working on a unit about Holocaust resistors. Kids made illustrations and sketches of the resistors, which Carter saved over the summer. The first week back to school, she handed them back and explained the concept for the massive group art project.

"Resistors in Color," the eighth-grade class’ artistic composition

Once the class was divided into groups and decided on a concept for their individual panels, they had to determine how to proceed, including developing a list of supplies and expenses.

"We had to take it from the lens of a working artist," Carter said. "You need to have your receipts to know where things are coming from and what they’re being used for. They wrote an artist statement and documented everything."

The money goes fast.

"Epoxy is expensive, clay is expensive, paint is expensive, brushes are expensive, tools are expensive, even paper," Carter said. "It's all expensive."

She was a stickler for documentation, explaining to the kids that they had to make the most of the materials and use them "wisely and appropriately for what we want to accomplish."

Ettinger sat on the sidelines at first while Carter's class did the initial work, but her turn to take charge of the project came sooner than she anticipated.

"She started, but I had the other end of the project," Ettinger explained. She assisted the students in creating interactive QR codes, explaining the subject of the art, the process and challenges. The kids wrote a script, did an audio recording, imported it into movie editing software and stitched together images of their resistor or resistance movement. That way, as people listen, they can see photos of the actual people or events.

Then came the bonus challenge — "although the kids were not so happy about it," she laughed. She instructed them to provide subtitles as well. "So now they’re starting to see that art is much more than just the art piece."

Seeing the completed work was the "shining jewel on top of everything," Carter said. The students felt the same.

Eighth-grader Ben Frumin recounted that when he first got the assignment to make a drawing of his researched resistor, he thought, "I’ll just make a cool drawing, but I didn't think about it turning into this big thing. It's pretty cool that we’re going to be able to have it up tonight and then in a permanent fixture at the school."

His classmate, Justin Sacks, was similarly proud of the work.

"We worked hard to make it, and it took like a year and a lot of hours. It’ll be pretty cool to have people walk by and point to it because I can say, ‘I did that,’" he said.

Michelle Schwartz was happy that her group selected her drawing of Hannah Szenes, Hungarian poet and Special Operations Executive paratrooper, for the second panel from the top left.

Ellen Sacks, Justin's mom, knew that his class was working on a project about the Holocaust but never suspected this would be the result.

"It's amazing and unlike anything we would have done as students," she said. "One of the things that Pardes does so beautifully is weave together so many different facets of education and experience, to cross over other subjects and come back together and culminate in this amazing project where the kids can present and learn and put their own spin on it."

"The students have grown up quite a bit this year, just in the way that they approach these types of things," Carter said.

Ettinger echoed that statement. Students came to her as the exhibit date approached, worried that a survivor might see something emotionally triggering in the artwork.

"They’re actually thinking about how to pick images with care so as not to hurt somebody else. That's the part I wasn't expecting, and it has been a delightful surprise to see how our students have taken it all with the seriousness that it deserves," she said. JN