Sarah Chaya Krikst 1901-1918
26 Canvasses - I have no other way to express my profound sorrow at what has happened and is happening in Israel and in Gaza. I hope to get started on the 26 canvases this week, 22 January 2024.
This series will be in loving memory of Sarah Chaya Krikst (1901-1918). Raped & murdered by the Cossacks. 16 or 17 years old. I am Wendy Chaya. I am named after her. My son Sam did a school project in 2005 and interviewed my aunt Sarah who told him “When my mother’s sister was just a girl, 16 or 17, she worked for a seamstress, fixing clothes. One night the seamstress had too much work and asked Sarah if she could stay at her house to help her complete it. She agreed and complied with the seamstress’s wishes. In the middle of the night, the Cossacks attacked and raided the house. They raped and murdered Sarah and then burned the house down”. I did not know about this earth-shattering event before this. Sarah lived in what was known as the Pale of Settlement, a western region of the Russian Empire that existed from 1791 - 1917. The family came from the region now known as Lithuania.
The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and what is now the western Russian Federation.” Wikipedia
17 March 2024, 7 canvases 1 acrylic on board completed (I think … I have been known to work on paintings after they are “finished”).
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/767684/pdf
Gendered Violence: Jewish Women in the Pogroms of 1917 to 1921 by Irina Astashkevich (2018)| review
"Some victims were mutilated or tormented with such sadistic intensity that they did not survive the rape."
The book positions itself within contemporary research on rape as a weapon of war, highlighting how rapists target a community's social fabric, causing irreparable damage. It notes that gang rapes, frequently conducted in public and often witnessed by the victims' family members, were designed to inflict lifelong shame and humiliation.
Below are the first 7 of 26 acrylic on canvases 30cm x 30cm + 1 acrylic on board 50cm x 50cm (Put Mud on Your Face). "The Cossacks are coming, put mud on your face" is an outrageous slogan. Hundreds and thousands of Jewish Women were raped in the Pale of Settlement during the Pogroms 1917 - 1921. A friend of mine told me the anecdotal story of how a doctor in a war zone tells beautiful young women to put mud on their faces to prevent rape.
