Stone candlestick made in the Cyprus detention camps, by sculptor Nahman Vikrovitzky. Cyprus, 5708 (1947/1948).
Rock gypsum, chiseled and engraved.
A candlestick shaped as the Hebrew letter "צ" with two indentation for candles. In the opening of the "צ" are the Hebrew letters י.ו.ן forming the Hebrew word ציון – "Zion".
The front of the candlestick is decorated with bunches of grapes and a view of David's Tower, and on its back is the Hebrew inscription "Cyprus 5708". The candlestick is placed on a square stone base decorated with bunches of grapes and a view of the Western Wall.
The sculptor Nahman Vikrovitzky (1924-2016), was born in Stolin (then Poland). On the eve of Rosh HaShanah 1942, his parents and all his family were murdered by the Nazis together with most of the Jewish population of the town. After the Holocaust, he tried to immigrate to Palestine on the illegal immigrant ship SS Theodor Herzl, which sailed from France on April 2, 1947, and was caught opposite the shore of Tel-Aviv. During his imprisonment in Cyprus, which lasted about a year and a half, Vikrovitzky sculpted in wood and stone. In Cyprus there were two groups of artists: the first consisted of students of the professional art workshops taught by Ze'ev Ben Zvi, Naftali Bezem and Chana Liberman, whose works of art tended to be expressionist and received artistic prestige, and who were appropriately equipped with hammers and chisels for working with stone. The second group was that of the 'amateur' artists whose works were considered by the first group as 'folkloristic' and simplistic. Vikrovitzky belonged to the second group and made his own work tools from nails, cans and other objects.
After Vikrovitzky immigrated to Israel, he commemorated the victims of the Holocaust in sculptures he exhibited in various venues. In 1993 he was awarded the Hermann Struck Prize of the Haifa Municipality for his works of art commemorating the Holocaust.
For additional information about art in the detention camps in Cyprus see enclosed material:
1. Cyprus, the Art of Life: The Detention Camps, 1946-1949. Tel-Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2017.
2. The Handiworks of the Cyprus Exiles Illegal Immigrants, by Ya'akov Koren (Hebrew), in the Israeli Numismatic Collector's Association newspaper [no year].
Height: 15 cm. Dimensions of base: 14X12 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes to edges. Glue to prevent slippage on the lower side of the stone base.
Provenance: The Rimon Family Collection.