A new exhibition offers a rare and deeply personal look at the Holocaust through the artwork of a child whose creativity endured amid imprisonment, fear, and tragic loss.
Sonja’s Legacy, on view at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove, centers on drawings and paintings created by Sonja Fischerova, a young Jewish girl from Prague who was imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camp between 1942 and 1944. Even under brutal conditions, Sonja filled her pages with color and detail, capturing moments of imagination, hope, and a longing for ordinary childhood life.
Sonja created her artwork while confined in a camp the Nazis used as both a ghetto and a propaganda tool. There, children were encouraged to draw under the guidance of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a Bauhaus-trained art teacher who believed creative expression could help preserve a child’s inner world amid trauma.
Sonja, her mother, and her sister were later deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered by the Nazis. Dicker-Brandeis was also killed.
Much like the diaries of Anne Frank, written by another Jewish child who died at a Nazi concentration camp, Sonja’s artwork offers an accessible and deeply human way for younger audiences to understand the Holocaust. The vibrancy of her images stands in stark contrast to her fate, the destruction of three generations of her family who had lived in Prague for centuries, and the murder of six million Jews across Europe.
The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Sonja’s Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit established by Sonja’s relatives. The foundation preserves and shares her story through an educational multimedia presentation that includes reproductions of Sonja’s artwork, family photographs, exhibit panels, and narration, often delivered by surviving family members.
A distinctive element of Sonja’s Legacy is its multigenerational focus, tracing the Holocaust’s impact on an extended family while also exploring the American experience of relatives who found refuge, immigrated, and rebuilt their lives after the war. The exhibition will remain on display through spring 2026.