“A Lucky Devil”
I had the privilege of meeting painter and Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak in 2019. I suggested to Maria he would be a fascinating interview and the next thing I know we were both in his house in a leafy suburb of Boston. As Maria conducted the interview, Sam instantly impressed me as a generous, thoughtful, driven, talented human who credited the love of his parents for his deep humanity. In his conversation with Maria, he described himself as “a lucky devil,” choosing to see his life as an abundance of opportunity born out of tragedy, a light that shone from darkness.
Sam is obsessed with his work which, although often dark, expresses a profound love of life and an outrage at the injustice that humans can inflict upon each other. His work is at once reflective and prescient, a sharp reminder of the past in today’s fraught context.
Young Samuel Bak’s prodigious talent was obvious to anyone who saw it when he was a boy in Vilna. A testament to the power and insistence of art.
After the Nazis drove his community into the ghetto, the first public exhibition of his work was held.
The adult artists in Sam’s orbit sniffed the wind shifting against them and sensed that Sam, having the best chances of survival, would be the vessel to carry the record of their existence into the world.
While most of his family including his father and grandparents perished at the hands of the Nazis, Sam and his mother found refuge in a Benedictine convent in a forced labor camp. When the Nazis suspected that there might be Jews hidden by the sisters, Sam would hide among the stacks of books while devouring their content.
After being liberated by the Soviets, Sam and his mother made their way to Israel eventually landing in the United States.
Over the next 80 years, he would prove that those artists and poets back in the Vilna ghetto had chosen the right man for the job, bearing witness, carrying the torch, and reminding us that we are vulnerable but also resilient, that there is great evil but also immense kindness.
In fact, Sam’s still at it, well into his 90’s, producing more than 100 paintings per year, exhibiting at galleries worldwide and museums that bear his name. Sam is a testament to the idea that a single spark can keep the flame of an entire people alive long after an empire’s attempt to extinguish its warmth.
At the end of last year, I reached out to Sam to ask if he would be willing to be the subject of a portrait and I was thrilled that he agreed. With my daughter Bella serving as my photo assistant, we met for a couple of hours at his beautiful studio, and he was typically generous with his time and thoughts. He showed me the catalogue of his more than 10,000 paintings, while surrounded by a dozen or so new paintings for a show that will open in September at the Pucker Gallery in Boston, which has represented him since the 1960’s.
As we parted, I asked Sam what he would say to that young boy back in the Vilna ghetto whose talent was abundant, but whose time might be short. He thought for just a moment, smiled, shrugged, and said “I’d just tell him don’t worry; it won’t always be like this. You’re going to have a very exciting life.”
