REPOSTING: Portrait of Herman's Mom (Acrylic Painting, 2006)

Day before yesterday, I posted a pencil sketch for this portrait. Now I am posting the final portrait that I painted of my friend Herman's mother back in 2006. 

When I was around 5, the Sussers moved in around the corner from where I lived in Pueblo, Colorado. Herman and I became playmates and friends at grade school, and Sunday School, spreading our collective orneriness across the neighborhood. So I knew Lili as Herman's mom. She had a musical voice, and lovely accent, and served great snacks when I came over.  Sometimes I listened while Lili spoke Yiddish with my grandmother. And I think it was my grandmother who explained that that the Sussers had been in concentration camps, but it was only later that I knew what that meant. And what I know now:

As a young girl, Lili lost her whole family in the holocaust but rose from the ashes of that loss. She started again. After the war, she  married Julius, also a holocaust survivor, and with her husband and young son, crossed the Atlantic and came to the U.S. From that beginning, her family grew to include three children, many grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

In the U.S., she began to learn English, and  moved to a place I doubt she had ever heard of, Pueblo, Colorado. Over time, she became part of this new community, and friends with enough of my relatives that I think of the Sussers as part of the meshpocha (family).

Lili lost a whole decade of her childhood to the concentration camps. But from the longings  of lost childhood years, as an adult she created a wonderful collection of dolls.  She and Julius made sure Herman had a train set that was the envy of 8-year-old me. And Lili always seemed to me to be young, somehow. 

From her memories of the holocaust, Lili wrote a book, starting with notes jotted on little pieces of paper. She did all this in her adopted language of English. With the help of her son Herman and his wife Kerry, she published the book and used it when she gave many, many talks to school children in Colorado, making sure they knew about the holocaust.  

Lili Susser was a woman of valor.  Although her time with us here on the planet ended yesterday, she will be remembered by so many of us, and her memory will be for a blessing for us, as was her life.