Pamela Reitman Presents at Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
Join Pamela Reitman, author of Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education on May 8th for a presentation on Charlotte Salomon’s life, writing her story as historical fiction, and more.
The Holocaust and the years leading up to it had a catastrophic effect on the arts: Jewish artists lost their lives in the death camps or were severely traumatized by social or ethnic persecution; many artists were forced to flee their homeland; and many artworks were destroyed, burned or looted between 1933 and 1945.
One of the most stunning works of art produced from that period in history, which did survive, was Life? Or Theater? by Charlotte Salomon. It tells a story in 850 watercolor/gouache paintings created while she was in exile in the South of France. Reitman will talk about the traumas this young woman faced and how she met each one with a steely determination to become a serious modernist artist.
She will ask (and answer) the questions: How does art transform trauma? AND—what is the role of historical fiction today, both for the reader and the writer, in Holocaust education?
Reitman will sign copies of her historical novel, Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life after the talk which will be available for purchase.
EVENT INFORMATION:
May 8th, 2025 – 6PM
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
724 NW Davis Street
Portland, OR 97209
About Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life:
Inspired by the life and work of Charlotte Salomon, this novel shows an artist intent on pursuing her art against all odds. As a young German-Jewish art student at The Berlin Art Academy during Hitler’s rise to power in 1938, Charlotte’s first place prize is denied because she is a Jew, her enrollment annulled. After Kristallnacht, she is sent from Berlin into exile with her grandparents.
When Charlotte’s grandmother leaps to her death, her Old World grandfather shocks her with the family secret, a legacy of female suicides. She struggles against her grandfather’s insistence that suicide, not art, is her destiny too.
Haunted by the encroaching terror of the Third Reich and the threat of psychological disintegration, Charlotte clings to her determination to become a serious modernist painter, to complete her monumental work “Life? Or Theater?” and get it into safekeeping in a race against time before capture by the Nazis.
About Pamela Reitman:
Pamela Reitman is an award-winning writer with numerous publications in literary journals, news outlets, and magazines. She has a B.A cum laude in English from Columbia and an MPH from the University of California Berkeley. She is retired from a career in public health and community service aimed at reducing the stigma of mental illness. Ms. Reitman was a past Director of Makar Or: A Jewish Meditation Center in San Francisco. She is lay ordained in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition. She lives in Northern California with her husband.
