In memory of the Holocaust :An Artist in Search of his Mentor: A story about roots and tolerance

An Artist in Search of his Mentor: A story about roots and tolerance


In Creative Painting for the Young Artist, a book I conceived about developing one’s artistic expression, one of the suggestions I give is to find a mentor to emulate. Unpredictably, my mentor became my artist grandfather, Jozef Alster. Jozef was liberated by the US army from the Buchenwald concentration camp, only to die a few days later from pneumonia, and right before my father had a chance to reunite with him. All through my childhood, I longed to know him, and one day I finally did.

A beautiful painting of a ruined medieval castle hung above my father's bed. The yellow stoned castle looked mystical and was perched high above a crest on a towering green mountain, easily a backdrop to some Dungeons and Dragons game. I wondered if the castle was real or from fantasy, like something out of a Brothers’ Grimm fairy tale. In the corner, it was signed “J. Alster.” I asked my father who “J. Alster” was, and he told me that it was his father, Jozef Alster, which happened to be where my Hebrew namesake came from. I questioned, who exactly is the fellow I have the honor to be named after and where was he hiding? I never met him. If he isn’t around then so- be -it I suppose. But how did the painting get here, above my father's bed? And come to think of it, if this painting was the work of one of my family, then why can’t I paint like this? I knew I had problems drawing a straight line properly. Why doesn't he come and offer to teach me how to draw and paint? All these questions were quite intriguing for a young lad just running out to play.

I asked my father where he was born, and he told me he came from the city of Wodavitza, Poland – the same city where the Polish Pope came from. I was amazed. I asked my father if he met the Pope as a boy, and he answered, "Yes, I must have. It was a small town. I must have bumped into him walking on the street or playing soccer in the park." The castle in the painting must be in Poland, I surmised. My father brought me along to visit his Aunt Sara in Crown Heights, New York. I was psyched to make this trip, thinking maybe my granddad would be there too. Sure enough, paintings from my grandfather adorned her walls, and a real large one hung behind the dining table, right behind me when I sat down to eat. Sadly, my grandfather was nowhere to be found. I asked my father how my aunt got the paintings from grandfather. The story began, Jozef Alster sold Aunt Sarah the paintings in Germany, and that's how they were saved. Aunt Sarah then gave a few of these precious paintings to my father when he arrived in the USA. Unfortunately, I was told, grandfather is no longer around, (but at that point in my life, my father did not reveal the exact reason why.)

This was confusing to me then, as I was just a young lad. Apparently now I have an aunt from Germany, a father from Poland, and a grandfather from both Germany and Poland. Before the war, as the stories would begin, all the others moved to Germany from Poland to have a better life, but were forced back to Poland when the Reich gained power. My aunt's family immigrated to the USA from Germany before the war, as Albert Einstein did, and brought the paintings they acquired from my grandfather. Thus his works of art were preserved. Yet, the mystery of the painting in my father’s room remained. Where then, was that castle my grandfather painted? Was it in Germany, Poland, or somewhere else entirely? Did it even exist? The rest of my family that I visited did not know for sure, but they did say he painted while vacationing somewhere in Germany. Germany then is the location.

Either way, I felt it was a real pity and a real loss that my grandfather was not around to teach me to paint and draw. I could not even draw a straight line if my life depended on it. Then one day, when I was 22 years old, I was required to enroll in an art appreciation class in college. Showing some photos of ancient Egyptian art and then comparing them to Renaissance art, the professor said something that changed my life. He declared that art progressed with time, and that anyone – yes, anyone – could be an artist. I almost fell off my chair. Anyone can be an artist? Anyone could be taught to paint? I was under the impression then that you have to have been born with artistic talent. After that breakthrough, I signed up for an art instruction class, put out my first painting in 1977, and from that day led a life embellished with art.

After twenty years of painting, visiting museums, and going to workshops, I have to say I produced and sold some quality artwork. I was so proud of what I was able to create and of my newfound confidence in this ability, I wanted to share it with anyone else who struggled as I did to make this possible, and thus Creative Painting for the Young Artist was born. In this book, I describe how to build one’s ability to express oneself creatively through art amongst examples of my art throughout the years, mostly consisting of pastel paintings of various scenes in Israel. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, one of the main highlights in my book is to encourage new artists to find a mentor. I wanted my grandfather to be my mentor somehow, so as a memorial to him, I featured one of his paintings in the book. Seeking to determine if the painting was from a professional or a layman I gave the painting my personal critique. My grandfather’s work was a shining example how a true artist would use composition, perspective, focal and vanishing points, visual movement, and how to detail the area of interest. It was through this book that I at last met my mentor, my dear grandfather, and brought him back to life.

After publishing this tribute, I still could not help but wonder if I will ever discover where the castle painting was from. The Internet was now available to use as a resource. As far as I could tell, there were no paintings from Jozef Alster for sale or display on the net. Through Internet sites on the castles of Germany, I scoured for the skyline of that castle. Eventually I discovered, with stunning irony, a building called Alster Tower. According to the reference I found, this tower served as a playhouse but did not look like the castle Jozef painted. Its design resembled that of a defense tower similar to those on the Alster River in Germany near Hamburg, yet despite this military overtone, Alster Tower reportedly was intended for the entertainment of guests. Did my grandfather paint a tower after one of the towers on the Alster River in Hamburg? Or, better yet, knowing that he came originally from Poland, did my grandfather actually assume the German name "Alster" and signed his paintings so? If this was true somehow, could it be that he used this tactic to avoid expulsion from Germany as a Polish Jewish migrant?

I later found out that Alster is indeed a German name, but it was also used in Austria where my grandfather served during the First World War. “Alster” signified the magpie bird, a symbol of Austria. According to my research, Austria ruled parts of Poland before the Polish declared independence. Henceforth, Polish Jews like my grandfather really could have had a German name as Alster, and did.

Living in Israel in 2005, I planned to take a vacation with a Russian lady friend. She wanted to see the snow like in Russia, and I wanted a cool vacation from hot Israel. She wanted to have a companion who spoke English, feeling as though she could not navigate well in Germany with solely her native Russian or Hebrew. Since I had been to Switzerland and Frankfurt, Germany already, I suggested beautiful Bavaria, Germany. Close to the border with Switzerland and the Alps, Bavaria was teeming with castles there like the Neuschwanstein of Sleeping Beauty Disneyland fame. I was comfortable with visiting Germany by this point – the war was certainly over by now – and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I will see the castle my granddad painted there.

As I had predicted, Bavaria was just beautiful. The hills covered in snow, lakes, streams, and woodlands reminded me of wintry Vermont or New Hampshire. Maybe that is why my dad settled in New England – it reminded him of home somehow. We had a grand time touring the old Bavarian towns on the so-called "Romance Trail.” There were castles there all right, but not that ruined castle my grandfather depicted. We stayed at a hotel just under the Neuschwanstein, and I sat out on the porch at night. The sky was clear and the castle was all lit up with flickering stars in the distance.

The next day, we awoke to a Bavarian breakfast. We made plans to head back north and make some stops at the different towns along the way to Munich. I peered out the window and saw some snow flurries dusting over the blizzard that crept up overnight. We checked out and headed to clean off the car, which was parked out in the open. I had not driven in winter weather in quite some time, and after seeing all this, I wondered if we would even be able to make it out of the parking lot. Sure enough, our massive rented German Mercedes could not make it up the incline from the parking lot to the road. It was unbelievable. Again and again, our German juggernaut kept sliding back down the driveway. It was no match for the snow and ice without snow tires or proper chains. Being stuck in Bavaria was not too awful, but we did want to press on. I never imagined that I would be stranded in the Bavarian snow with a German car.

It was under these circumstances that I would meet with my second genuine German. Hans was a handsome young man whose parents owned the hotel. When I met him, I couldn’t help but think to myself, Hans is such a stereotypical German name. I was surprised it was still being used. With blond hair, blue eyes, and a quiet demeanor, he seemed like the poster child for the Hitler youth. He knew I was from Israel too, since we had registered our home addresses at the hotel and showed them our passports too. Hans’s mom had been out shoveling snow, and seeing that we were stranded, called Hans and told him to please help us. He tried for about a full 30 minutes to put on the snow chains on the tires for us. We did receive snow chains for the rental car at the airport in Munich, but as Murphy’s Law would have it, they turned out to be the wrong size. Hans told us he would have to drive us into town and get a new pair from the dealer, so we traveled five miles into town, got the right chains, and he spent another half hour in the snow strapping them on. With the new chains, we were able to make it up the incline to the road and the main roads were cleared. I wanted to give Hans special thanks. I gave him a copy of my art book with the photo of the German castle in it. A little melodramatically, I looked him in the eyes and just came out and told him, "My last name is Alster. Alster is a German name." Without giving it a second thought, I opened up to the page with my grandfather’s mysterious castle and showed it to him. "The castle in the book, my grandfather painted it. This is a German castle. Enjoy.” Thinking about the significance of what I was telling him, that I have German roots and heritage too, even if I am Jewish. I felt like I was trying to explain to him that Germany too was a homeland, and the relationship between Jews and Germans under even the simplest conditions will always be weighted by history. That it is alright for Jews now to visit Germany – the war is finally over. If other Jews visit Bavaria, I would hope that they will stay at his family’s wonderful hotel and be more than welcomed. Hans’ act of helping me was one of the kindest things anyone has done for me. We got into the car and drove off. A few miles down the road the chains fell right off again.



I left Germany without knowing where the castle was. In 2006, back in Zichron Yacov, Yom Ha’zikaron (Remembrance Day) had arrived and I was with my youngest daughter Limor. Reflecting on the Holocaust, "Dad,” she asked me, “what's the story again of the painting that survived the Holocaust? How did it get to Israel?” I told her that I have tried researching the castle’s origins in any way that I could think of, and that the best results turned up from a topographical map search of Germany focused in the Rhine area, far from Bavaria. Intrigued, Limor suggested I use Google images, which was brand new at the time. We searched for the words castle, Germany, and Rhine together, and voila! The very first photo that shows up is Drachensfels castle. Eureka! 10-4, BINGO, Kunta Kinte, that’s it! The ruined walls, the colors of the scenery, the windows in the towers, the adjacent hill – it was a perfect match, conjured with my daughter’s idea right before my eyes; "Limor, you did it.”

But, there are only two walls in the castle photo and three walls in the painting. Could it have been ruined during the war? That made no sense. If one wall was knocked off by a powerful blast, the chances are that the other walls would be damaged too. How come this ruined castle is in worse shape than the other castles in Germany, and still standing intact? Either the Allies saved the castles from destruction during the war, or someone bothered to renovate them quite well. If so, what happened to the third wall? If this was the same castle, had my grandfather merely taken some artistic license? We searched further and found “Drachensfels” meant “fallen dragon.” Dragons brought to mind dinosaurs, which brought to mind the premise of Jurassic Park, and I wondered if dinosaurs really could be resurrected through experiments with their DNA, perhaps I could somehow bring my granddad back to life as well so he could explain this great mystery. After all, why paint this castle out of all the castles in Germany? If I found its location, could I discover the position in which my grandfather created this painting? Above all, is there anything so special about it that the painting alone could not reveal? The painting itself was beginning to reveal her secrets.

I pushed onward, looking up Drachensfels Castle and Google yielded me more clues: “Drachensfels Castle is the remnant of a proud castle of which today only the high tower is still seen. The hill and the castle enjoy tremendous popularity and is a popular tourist destination. The view from the 1050-ft.-high summit is considered one of the most famous on the Rhine. The former masters of the castle, the Counts of Drachensfels had a winged, fire-spitting dragon in their coat of arms. In the last century, the stone quarries jeopardized the hilltop and the tower. These had been continually extended until the Government stepped in, taking over the peak and safeguarding the ruins from any further danger. “

Is my grandfather's painting, like a time machine, witness to the damage from the quarry? The third castle wall is now gone. Out of all the things a caption might say, here under the image of the castle, "In the last century, the hilltop and the tower were jeopardized by the stone quarries.” Yet, here, it fits in like another piece to the puzzle. Interestingly, one of the reasons artists paint nature scenes is to capture beautiful scenery for remembrance before it is swept away by modernity. Was Jozef an artist like that?

So, at last, I can make an educated guess as to why my grandfather painted this particular castle. It is popular in Germany as a tourist attraction and has a natural aura full of adventure stories and fantasy. Perhaps he might have thought he could sell it to one of the tourists just as I would with my own paintings of Israel. Whatever the truth, for me he survived the Holocaust through his art, and that he was certainly someone worthy of looking up to as a mentor.