Gabriella Karin is alive today, literally, because of the kindness and bravery of fellow humans. 

By Mary O’KEEFE

Gabriella Karin was born in Bratislava, Slovakia and was very close to her parents. She was not born into a war-torn world; however, in 1940 Slovakia joined the Axis, a military alliance of countries – mainly Germany, Italy and Japan – by signing the Tripartite Pact. In 1941 the Axis invaded the Soviet Union and declared war on Britain and the U.S. 

Slovakia consented to the deportation of its Jewish residents to camps. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, 57,000 Slovak Jews were sent to labor and concentration camps. 

This is the world Karin knew when she was 11 years old. 

Her mother worked for the Underground. She and her father were well connected with the police in her town; however, that did not mean a lot when soldiers were in the streets. Her mother would get a list of those Jews who were to be deported and warned them. 

“My mother took me with her,” Karin said of the trip to warn fellow Jews. “Many, many times I remember we went to relatives. They were crying and they told us ‘We have nowhere to go.’ [Once] it was my second cousin, a 4-year-old boy, my mother’s first cousin, her mother and husband and the father of the little boy … We never saw them again.”

She added her mother was very brave because at that time there was a curfew and no Jew could be on the street at night. But her mother would travel at night, warning of the deportations. 

Karin shared what she witnessed during the WWII years not only in words but through her art. After retiring from a career in fashion it took only a short amount of time before she realized she wasn’t meant for retirement, so she took art classes which led to a new career. 

Her art is a reflection of her childhood, which was full of separation from her family and hiding with those who risked their lives to help. It was terrifying but Karin has also, through her art, found a hopefulness that is almost unimaginable considering what she witnessed. 

CVW was invited into her Los Angeles home that is adorned with her art, including signature butterflies. 

“From an ugly cocoon comes a beautiful butterfly,” she said. 

To her this is hope, from something dark to light. Her artwork is powerful. 

One of her sculptures has six electric candles atop six columns. The six columns symbolize the Jewish people; fall leaves adorn some of the columns – this represents those who perished in the Holocaust. Other columns have faces in agony and frozen screams. This represents the feelings of Jewish people just before death. Six million Jewish people died in the Holocaust and five million non-Jewish people. The center of the sculpture is a representation of those non-Jews who Adolf Hitler included in his “Final Solution:” the handicapped, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, courageous resistors, gypsies and homosexuals. 

The copper, gold and burnt fall colors add to the anguish of those represented in this work of art. 

Growing up Karin and her parents were always prepared to be discovered and to be taken like so many of her friends, neighbors and family. For several years she lived with nuns who hid and protected her. 

“But my mother came and saw how unhappy and sick I was,” she said. 

So she was taken to be with her family. Karin remember the nuns in a piece of art that has the sisters’ long habits sweeping down to curve around three small faces of children, in a protective yet hidden hug. 

When she was 14 she joined the rest of her family with a “courageous resistor” named Karol Bianar. He took them into his one bedroom home and hid them. She stayed there until 1945 when Russians liberated them. 

There is another piece of art that depicts this time of her life. She sits at a school-type desk with her family nearby all behind wire fencing as Bianar remains vigilant just outside of the wired area. 

For years Karin did not know where Bianar ended up after the liberation. She searched and found his brother and then found him. Bianar had passed away but Karin had to do something to show how much his bravery meant to her. She found he was buried in Ohio in an unmarked grave. She procured a gravestone for him and had him recognized as a Righteous Person Among the Nations. This recognition is reserved for non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. 

She continues to work on her art and has started the Righteous Conversation Project in which she mentors students and other participants. They work together on art and film projects and collaborate with Holocaust survivors to learn and share their stories. 

She lost 75 members of her family to the Holocaust but keeps their memory alive – along with the history of the Holocaust – through her art. 

Currently she tries to stay away from too much news of the day and said she is “very” worried of what is happening in the world today. 

A lot of her art is now focused on the terrorist massacre of Oct. 7, 2023 when Hamas terrorists waged the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. 

“It felt like it was happening again,” she said. “I’m so afraid it is going to happen again.”

She said she doesn’t think people know what the Holocaust was like during WWII, they don’t understand the fear. And although Karin has lived a wonderful life with her husband, also a Holocaust survivor, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, there is always that memory of that fear that fed her young years. 

“I remember everything.”