Heather Dune Macadam's Blog

Yesterday, we went into NYC to see the Cypresses Van Gogh show at the Met. I thought of Starcrossed's heroine, Annette Zelman, as I studied the textures and brush strokes. Most of you don't know that my parents were both find artists, and I was taught to examine paintings from multiple perspectives (much as I like to write!). So I look from the right and then the left, far back (if possible in a crowd) and close up for inspection. I do love the #impressionists. I am known for visiting Les Nymphaes in #Paris and swimming around the room, as if I were swimming at Giverny in Monet's pond.

The collection at the Met has many paintings from private collections and I saw Van Gogh using palettes I have never seen in his work before--more muted, earth tones, very different. And I swear I could feel the breeze in some of them. There was one that I had never seen before - violet storm clouds and the vertical strokes across the fields--away from the painter's perspective--felt like a wind was at his back, pushing the clouds away.

Annette would have loved the exhibit. It wasn't surrealism, which was her favorite genre, but she was always looking for ways to see and experience life through art. I imagined how she and Jean would have discussed the art as they walked hand and hand through the galleries and needled through the crowds. I thought, as I stood before a less popular painting, that this is where they would have stood - unmoving. Hand in hand. Silently communicating. Eating up the color palette, divining the strokes, and then would have slipped to their chambre de bonne to make love under their own collection of art, hanging above their unmade bed.

I have posted images on Instagram: H D Macadam
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions...

In Birkenau the first selection takes place among prisoners. The selection takes place in the isolation ward, which is overcrowded. The trucks take 90% of the people, about 1,200 inmates (considered ill, exhausted and incapable of work). 89 prisoners and … Continue reading →

I held a Livestream event on Facebook on 26 March, talking about some of my research and about the anniversary. I also take to task the issue of why the Holocaust Museum (US) and Auschwitz were tweeting about the 999 Ravensbruck prisoners who arrived in Auschwitz but NOT our 999 innocent young Jewish girls. WHY CAN'T THEY GET THIS RIGHT?
You can find that event at:
https://www.facebook.com/999themovie/...

I am going to do an online chat at New Canaan library that will also stream live, on April 13 and on April 15, the anniversary of the liberation of Bergen Belsen, I am going to do a presentation on the girls of the first transport who were liberated from Belsen with children of those survivors. All live streams are on Facebook. I don't think I can post them here, but if I figure out how to do it, I WILL! Thanks for remembering the girls. HD xxxx

National Geographic on the 75th Anniversary of the Death March and the subsequent liberation of Auschwitz, this week.

It was one o’clock in the morning when the first women in Auschwitz were ordered into the snow driven night. Men had smuggled extra food and warm clothes to them, even shoes for the pending death march, but for hours … Continue reading →

Róża Robota, Ala Gertner, Estusia Wajcblum, and Regina Safirsztajn were hung to death on January 6, 1945, 12 days before the camp was evacuated as the Russian front approached. The women had been tortured by the Gestapo for 3 months after … Continue reading →

In the evening four female Jewish prisoners: Ella Gartner, Roza Robota, Regina Safir and Estera Wajcblum, are hanged in the women’s camp of Auschwitz. They were condemned to death because they assisted in the uprising that broke out on Oct. … Continue reading →

As we head to the end of this historic year in 1944, we head toward the anniversaries of liberation and hope to come in 1945, and yet for many prisoners liberation would not come except through death. Let us remember … Continue reading →

It is hard to believe that in just a three months we will be at the 70th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and I will have chronicled almost 3 years since my coverage of the 70th Anniversary of the … Continue reading →

Among these women selected to die there are older women and younger women, sick and healthy. It is random and without meaning, those who are selected to die. On Jan. 1, 1944, The occupancy level of women’s camp in Birkenau … Continue reading →