Judith R. Robinson
American

Wildflowers Cover Everything
Acrylic paint on canvas

In Judy Robinson’s solo exhibit “The Numbers Keep Changing,” displayed at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh in Summer 2019, this painting was hung alongside a corresponding poem, which also functioned as the label:

Wildflowers Cover Everything

For Father Patrick Desbois*

And the priest reports

A few villagers,

Aged but still living,

Remember

The festival days.

Mozart was played.

Strudel was served.

And beer.

There will be no towers

Of shoes or dentures,

No photo galleries,

No lampshades or gold teeth.

I write this poem

And Father Desbois does what he can

To survey, to count, to record,

But they were millions.

–

As a Jew born during World War II, Robinson has always been conscious of how easily her life might have been different if she had not been born in the United States. For that reason, the Holocaust became a subject of study and identity for her. Antisemitism and the enormity of loss it created and continues to create led Judy to address these themes in multiple media. Poetry and painting weave together to interpret a shared history.

Of this piece, Robinson said: “Father Patrick Desbois has added to our knowledge of the Holocaust with his recent discoveries of mass pits of murdered Jews in areas of the former Soviet Union. I am particularly impressed by his outstanding work, and honored to have met him.”

Click here for the full digital catalog from The Numbers Keep Changing.