Born in Warsaw, Alfred (Aaron) Wolmark moved in 1883 with his family to England, where he grew up in an immigrant Jewish milieu. While studying art at the Royal Academy Schools in London, he adopted his Anglo-Saxon first name. Wolmark’s artistic style was largely influenced by the Post-Impressionists and Fauvists, as evident in his bright and bold colors. In addition to painting landscapes, still lifes, and portraits, Wolmark produced stage designs for Diaghilev’s ballets, stained-glass windows for St. Mary’s Church in Slough, and illustrations for the books of the preeminent Anglo-Jewish intellectual and author of the era, Israel Zangwill.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there lived a poor Jewish family in a small Lithuanian village. The oldest son, Borukh, had to go to the forest every day to gather dry twigs for…
The Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest is the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest in the world, capable of accommodating three thousand people. The Moorish- and Byzantine-inspired…
During the bitterest days of my European exile, I turn to the photo album where I keep, along with more recent memories, a few images from my childhood—images that enlarged and corrected, come back to…