Rosemarie Koczy was born in 1939 in Germany, near Recklinghausen. In 1942 she and her family were deported to the Traunstein camp, near Dachau, and at three years old, she was transported by cattle car to Ottenhausen, a sub camp of Natzweiler-Struthof, near Saarbrucken. She was there from 1942 to 1945 and then she was returned to her grandparents and lived with them until her grandmothers death. After that she was put in an orphanage. Her mother, whose maternal rights had been taken away, was homeless and lived in cattle cars and she was very sick. When she came to the orphanage to visit Rosemarie was told "Your Mother, that prostitute, is here but you cannot see her". They thought that she and her sister should do penance for our mother so they made me them put stones in their shoes and ropes around their waists which lacerated their skin. One day the Mother Superior called Rosemarie to her office and said "Your mother is dead. Here is a train ticket". So she was able to see her mother in her coffin, her neck riddled with needle punctures. From then on no one ever spoke of her. In the orphanage they did not go to school, but could only become apprentices. In 1953 Rosemarie told them she wanted to be a painter. The nuns allowed her to take watercolor lessons with Sister Benedicta for one hour each day. At age 20 she finally left the orphanage. Her grandfather gave her money, bought a train ticket and found her a job in Geneva as a maid with a Swiss German family. Rosemarie began to take books out of the library. She copied El Greco. This is the way she learned to draw. She stayed in Switzerland until 1984 when she was finally able to leave for the United States. Rosemarie passed away in 2007.
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Holocaust #2 24 x 16 matted and framed $625 |
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Holocaust #3 16 x 13 matted and framed $525 |
