Lower margin inscribed: “Yeshivah Jasi [sic]. Savran, Transnistria”. Not examined out of frame . Approximately 465x600 mm

(SHVITHI). An attractive Shvithi plaque, watercolor on paper. Central Menorah flanked by rampant lions, roundels of the Cave of Rachel and the Western Wall on either side, with appropriate Hebrew inscriptions above and below.

Transnistria was a “geographic freak,” a short-lived province carved out of the Ukraine and decreed into existence by the Rumanian dictator Ion Antonescu in August 1941. The Jews of Rumania were deported to Transnistria where they were annihalated by the thousands. This Shvithi would seem to have been produced by a member of the Yeshiva of Jassy (city, North-Eastern Rumania) who was deported to the ghetto of Savran. The artist’s name is unknown. See J.S. Fisher, Transnistria-The Forgotten Cemetery (1969); J.B. Schechtman, The Transnistria Reservation, in: YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, Vol. VIII (1953) pp.178-96.