Art News

Survivor Treasures Mother’s Last Letters in Holocaust Museum’s Photo Project

NEW YORK (AP).- Old photos don’t stir memories for Jean-Claude Goldbrenner, but words do. He was just 3 in his picture posted on the special U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s web site, so he could do little but identify himself. But his mother’s letters — given to him by an aunt — are poignant reminders of a childhood shaped by tragedy. Estera Goldbrenner — known as Elsa — was arrested by German police in May 1943 on a train in Nice, France, as she traveled to visit her jailed husband, Willy. She began writing her family after being shipped to Drancy, a transit camp outside Paris where thousands of French Jews were deported to concentration camps. She wrote about 10 letters that June and July. At first, she was optimistic she’d be released because she was pregnant. “I saw the doctor today,” she wrote in