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Painting Resilience is Julia Mayer’s vivid personal exploration of the role Fred Terna’s art played in surviving four concentration camps; his post-WWII marriage to his emotionally scarred childhood sweetheart - a fellow survivor; their escape to France, Canada, and the United States; their divorce; and his subsequent happy marriage to a daughter of survivors and the family they created.
Included are reproductions of more than two dozen of Fred’s works, along with personal photos captured by Fred’s son, photographer Daniel Terna. Fred’s art is held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Vienna’s Albertina Collection, and Israel’s Yad Vashem, among others.
Fred says that living through the Holocaust was luck but living with it takes skill. Julia wanted to discover what those skills are, record how Fred acquired them, and illuminate the manner in which his art gave rise to Fred’s example that painful and destructive memories do not exclude a happy and productive life, as he puts it.
I have known Fred as a family friend since I was a young girl, recalls Julia. But it wasn’t until six years ago during a tour of his studio and art archive - I was in my mid-20s; Fred was 91 - that I realized I needed to be a conduit for Fred’s life and art inspiring future generations.
In the camps we promised each other that the one who survives would tell the story, Fred told Julia. Today, Fred is 97 and still telling the story and still painting; Julia is 31, and Painting Resilience is her effort at ensuring that Fred’s story is available to future generations. Upon reading the finished book, Fred told Julia, By telling my story you have lifted a tremendous burden off my shoulders.
