arts&life

exhibits / on the cover

Chaos | Control

LYNNE KONSTANTIN ARTS & LIFE EDITOR

Local Holocaust

survivor, speaker

and activist Rene

Lichtman is ready

to show another

dimension — artist.

R

BRETT MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHER

ene Lichtman is a Holocaust survivor, a hidden child outside
of Paris with a non-Jewish family. He was baptized and didn’t
know he was Jewish until his mother came for him after the

war.
He’s the founder of a local group called Hidden Child/Child
Survivors. He’s also the founder of the World Federation of Jewish
Child Survivors of the Holocaust. He speaks often about the
Holocaust locally — to students at Hillel Day School, to visitors at the
Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills and at senior homes
— and nationally. He is a natural storyteller. And he has a breathtak-
ing story to tell.
But Lichtman doesn’t want to talk about that. Rene Lichtman
wants to tell a different story — about art.
Lichtman, 80, is the subject of a one-person exhibit at
the Lawrence Street Gallery in Ferndale. “Rene Lichtman: A

Retrospective 1960-2018, Paintings & Collages” opened May 2 and
will run through May 25, with an opening reception on May 4; a mid-
month reception and artist’s talk will be held May 20.
“In the Detroit community, I’m more known as a survivor and a
speaker,” Lichtman says. “The art piece — nobody knows about it
because it’s not Holocaust art.”
But it is all connected. Lichtman was born in 1937 in Paris, where
his Polish parents had fled the year before. His father, wanting to help
the fight against the Nazis, took up arms for the French army. During
his service, he befriended a Catholic family in Le Vert Galant, outside
of Paris, who agreed to take in Rene should anything happen to him.
Lichtman’s father was killed in battle. His mother gave over tem-
porary guardianship of Rene to the family, who raised him, lovingly,
as their own — and Catholic — while his own mother also went into
hiding.

TOP: Rene Lichtman in
his home studio.
LEFT TO RIGHT:
Rene in France with
his parents, Jacob
Lichtman and Helen
Zajdman. Lichtman’s
French parents, Anne
and Paul Lepage.
Lichtman with his
two mothers, Maman
Helene and Maman
Nana.

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May 3 • 2018

jn