March 2016 Portrait of the Month - Fryderyka Mangel

Fryderyka Mangel

This month's Portrait of the Month honors Fryderyka Mangel, whose birthday is March 14th. Fryderyka and her husband, Edmund, were able to hide and survive the war with help from two Polish families. After the war, however, Fryderyka and Edmund were driven out of Poland by pogroms. Read more about their lives below.This beautiful portrait was created at a Memory Project workshop at Austin High School in El Paso, Texas. The teacher wrote us to say how much his students enjoyed the workshop:

"They loved the lesson. I will use it every year from now on. The great thing about this lesson is that... the content is so deep. I love that the students don't realize they have bonded with the image they drew until they learn the fate of the person in the photo. The time they spent with the image builds a bridge through time and makes the abstract, monumental idea of the Holocaust very personal. They are able to digest the tragedy, the loss when it starts with one picture."
-Shane Wiggs