This painting is a tribute to the many men and women who were able to survive the Holocaust utilizing their sewing talents, inspired by the story of my great-grandmother, Sarah Adlerstein, for whom I was named.

I painted a 1936 Singer sewing machine because of her ability to sew and how she used that skill to survive the Holocaust. One example in which she used her sewing skills is when she was in a camp with her mother and everyone was given a very thin blanket in the freezing weather. She and her mother took their two blankets, sewed them together, and stuffed them with hay. The challenge was that they didn’t have thread or needles, so instead they used the hay as the thread. They both worked together so she and her mother would be warm.

After the war my great-grandmother and her parents went back to their home in Belgium to see if anything was left of their tailor shop to sell and obtain some money. The family traveled to New York and opened a French tailoring shop. The shop supported the Adlerstein family and also gave employment to another Holocaust survivor named Paul Parker. He and my great-grandmother married; in the picture you can see the couple in front of the tailoring shop.

This artwork was created on Fridays in Sarah’s exploratory art class in the Yeshivat Noam art studio.

By Sarah Cohen, 7th Grader at Yeshivat Noam