Frontline Art: The Theatre of Resistance

Sonia is waiting. Her cheeks are rouged, her face powdered. She is neatly dressed, well presented. She is 95 years old, in aged care. It is March 2015. After the death, two years ago, of her partner, Pinche Wiener, she was transferred to the dementia ward. Although she’s not sure who she is waiting for, she is far from demented. She is the Sonia Lizaron I have known for more than three decades: unassuming, dignified and, for the most part, tranquil.

On the wall is the cover of Sonia’s record of Yiddish songs, In Freyd un Umet: ‘In Joy and Sorrow’. Her face adorns the cover. Her complexion is olive, her features fine and angular. The photo was taken in 1966. She is in her prime, radiant. Beside the cover hang two portraits of Sonia, one painted in Paris, the other in New York, and beside them, glued to the wall with blue-tac, are Sonia’s colouring-in drawings—a tree, a bird and the traced outline of her hand and wrist, encircled by an orange bangle. On a coffee table stands a vase of roses, and on the dresser, two prewar photos of Sonia’s mother, Lisa—in one she sits beside her two young children, her son Genek and daughter Sonia.