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X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://jewishcommunitylibrary.org/
X-WR-CALNAME:Jewish Community Library
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UID:MEC-793d8e745d2b346c4ddc27a534083243@jewishcommunitylibrary.org
DTSTART:20260308T203000Z
DTEND:20260308T213000Z
DTSTAMP:20260130T192200Z
CREATED:20260130
LAST-MODIFIED:20260220
PRIORITY:5
SEQUENCE:135
TRANSP:OPAQUE
SUMMARY:Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life, with Pamela Reitman
DESCRIPTION:\n\n\n\nPlease register to attend this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking ( https://goo.gl/maps/h11asWbpMhssBkMq6 ) at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  \nInspired by the life and work of Charlotte Salomon, Pamela Reitman’s novel shows an artist intent on pursuing her art against all odds. As a young German-Jewish art student at The Berlin Art Academy during Hitler’s rise to power in 1938, Salomon’s first place prize is denied because she is a Jew, her enrollment annulled. After Kristallnacht, she is sent from Berlin into exile with her grandparents in France.\nWhen Salomon’s grandmother leaps to her death, her Old World grandfather shocks her with the family secret, a legacy of female suicides. She struggles against her grandfather’s insistence that suicide, not art, is her destiny too. Haunted by the encroaching terror of the Third Reich and the threat of psychological disintegration, Salomon clings to her determination to become a serious modernist painter, to complete her monumental work “Life? Or Theater?” and get it into safekeeping in a race against time before capture by the Nazis.\nReitman will be sharing “Survival Through Art: The Life and Work of Charlotte Salomon,” a slideshow presentation with full-color paintings by the artist and photos of Salomon’s family and friends. This program covers the life of the artist, focusing on how the creative force, the making of her masterpiece “Life? Or Theater?,” transformed the many traumas of Salomon’s young life and saved her from suicide. It celebrates her courage to create under dire circumstances, and to risk her life to ensure her legacy.\nPamela Reitman is an award-winning writer with numerous publications in literary journals, news outlets, and magazines. She has a BA cum laude in English from Columbia University and an MPH from the University of California Berkeley. She is retired from a career in public health and community service aimed at reducing the stigma of mental illness. Reitman served as director of Makor Or: A Jewish Meditation Center in San Francisco, and is lay ordained in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition. Her novel, Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life, recently won the PenCraft Award for Literary Excellence in the category of historical fiction. Reitman is a Jewish Book Council Touring Author for 2025-26.\nThis program is made possible by Dorothy Connelly and Richard Segal.\n\n\n\n\n
URL:https://jewishcommunitylibrary.org/events-listing/charlotte/
LOCATION:1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://jewishcommunitylibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/pamela-e1769804125324.jpg
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