Rachel Stern2025-11-28T14:22:03-05:00November 25th, 2025|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, It is almost Thanksgiving here in the US. And I thank you for being part of our community. Your interest and engagement, your questions and comments, your ideas and support have helped shape who we are today. And it's been a productive year - not over yet! - with wonderful long-term and new partners. I'll address the exhibitions and other projects another time. In 20 virtual and in-person events we have discovered and discussed incredible art - some created in harrowing circumstances. We have commemorated and celebrated the art and their creators, who can inspire us all. The decisions they were confronted with and their life stories are as relevant as ever. Thank you to the [...]
Rachel Stern2025-11-09T06:20:57-05:00July 29th, 2025|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Immediately after Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany in 1933 the Nazi government started persecuting Jews. Within months, tens of thousands of Jews left Germany. But soon emigration slowed considerably as visas became impossible to obtain. About 10,000 children were saved by leaving the country on a Kindertransport to Great Britain between December 1, 1938 and September 1, 1939. Later this month, we are screening the documentary My Knees Were Jumping; Remembering the Kindertransports and feature a discussion with Melissa Hacker, the film director. There were also individuals who stood up against the Nazi regime by saving people from persecution. Did you know that Aristides de Sousa Mendes saved artist Tamara DE LEMPICKA's daughter and stepdaughter? [...]
Rachel Stern2025-11-07T10:45:31-05:00July 2nd, 2025|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Summer is here! As we are heading for July 4th, I hope you are staying cool in this sweltering heat. Looking for inspiring summer reading, we bring you a virtual book talk about another strong woman: WEDNESDAY, July 9, 12:00PM EDT DEAR MISS PERKINS. A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany Book talk by Rebecca Brenner Graham, Ph.D. REGISTER HERE In this book talk, Rebecca Brenner Graham describes how Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany - without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition. Frances Perkins’s early experiences working in Chicago’s famed Hull House, and as a firsthand [...]
Rachel Stern2025-06-23T04:46:38-04:00June 23rd, 2025|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Art has the power to enlighten, uplift, and help us recognize our common humanity even when confronted by inhumanity. At FAS, we are constantly inspired by the artwork created by people who were persecuted for their identity or for their art by the German National Socialists and their European Allies 1933-1945. Learning about the strength and resilience of the artists and the moral and ethic values of those who refused to be perpetrators or bystanders helps guide our reflections and actions today. In our 2024 program report you can find out more about our work: PROGRAM REPORT 2024 Five more days in our fundraising campaign to ensure our virtual programming! Every donation will be [...]
Rachel Stern2025-04-29T10:30:15-04:00April 29th, 2025|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, May is the month during which we celebrate the fifth anniversary of our virtual event series "Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression." You can now find about 150 artist videos on our YouTube channel @fritzaschersociety! Throughout this month, we ask you to donate to the Fritz Ascher Society to enable us to continue this important virtual program, which brings artists to a global audience, who are not widely known because they were persecuted or murdered by the German Nazis. We need to raise $10,000.00 to ensure the continuation of this program. And I am happy to announce that every donation made this month will be matched dollar-for-dollar until we reach that amount, so please: [...]
Rachel Stern2025-04-29T10:31:47-04:00April 2nd, 2025|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Spring is here, with the energy of renewal and growth and blossoming trees, plants and flowers. Holidays abound, and we honor Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. We have organized fabulous virtual events for you, but first I have a story with a happy ending for you, at least for the art: Pretty exactly a year ago, the reporter and writer Julie Zigoris told the story of artwork that was found on a park bench in San Francisco’s Crane Cove Park in 2022. City employees had rescued the art and found the majority of the artworks to be by the Jewish painter Ary Arcadie Lochakov (1892-1941), a member of the famed School of Paris group that includes [...]
Rachel Stern2025-04-09T14:22:41-04:00March 24th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Curator Erik Riedel presents the work of the painter and graphic artist Léo Maillet, who changed his original name Leopold Mayer in exile, reflecting the numerous fractures in his biography. Image above: Léo Maillet, Le Graveur (Self-Portrait), 1944. Oil on cardboard. Permanent loan by the Adolf und Luisa Haeuser-Stiftung für Kunst und Kulturpflege. © estate of Léo Maillet: Daniel Maillet and Nikolaus Mayer After his dramatic escape from a deportation train bound for Auschwitz, Maillet lived in the French Cévennes under a false identity from 1942 onwards. He painted and drew with the simplest of materials. Some years later, he took up the works he had created during his flight and persecution and transformed them [...]
