At the Interface of Film and Memoir: a Conversation with Elizabeth Rynecki

As an adult, she became more curious about these paintings, which were all the work of her great-grandfather, Moshe Rynecki. Moshe Rynecki painted almost 800 scenes of Jewish Polish life before he was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto and was later murdered at the Majdanek concentration camp.

When the laws changed to restrict Jews in Poland, Moshe Rynecki packed up his paintings in bundles of 50 and gave them to various friends and acquaintances to keep safe while he was in the Ghetto. Decades later, most of the paintings remained lost, but Elizabeth Rynecki searched the globe — flying to Canada, Poland, and Israel — to find as many of these paintings as possible. She wrote about this journey in Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter’s Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy and later produced a documentary of this search in the film Chasing Portraits. Undomesticated recently spoke to Rynecki about her book, her film, and her quest for answers.

Undomesticated: Your journey to search for your great-grandfather’s lost paintings took you to Canada, Poland, and Israel, all while your sons were quite young. It shouldn’t be difficult for women to leave home for work travel, but that’s not the reality. Was it difficult to leave home? And what kind of preparations did you need to make before you set off on these trips?

Rynecki: I am lucky to be married to a loving and incredibly supportive husband. Steve not only encouraged me to make the film, but insisted I needed to do so, and held down the fort each time I was away. While I did stock up on extra groceries for my family before each trip, the majority of my preparations dealt with making Chasing Portraits to-do lists. The trip to Canada was a long weekend, so that was fairly easy for everyone. The two-week journey to Poland was harder. My sons were pre-teens at the time, which meant they were old enough to make themselves breakfast and pack school lunches and that Steve really only needed to make sure they got up and out the door to school on time — a tough ask since he is not a morning person. As for family dinners, I think there were quite a few frozen pizzas and Mexican take-out orders while I was away! Of course, we all missed one another and did talk on the phone most days, but it was tough to coordinate because of the nine-hour time difference.

Undomesticated: You write about deciding not to reclaim your great-grandfather’s lost paintings, but rather to document and catalogue them like an art historian. Yet you still met with resistance when you found some of the new owners. As frustrating as that is, it’s also a testament to Moshe Rynecki’s legacy. What was the most challenging part of your search to locate Moshe’s art?

Rynecki: The hardest part about searching for my great-grandfather’s lost art is that I am entirely dependent upon museums and private collectors to alert me to their holdings. I’ve been asked if I’d go to Poland again to search for more works. I’m not clear what that would look like because I can’t just start knocking on doors and asking people if they’ve got a Moshe Rynecki painting in their living room or attic.

Rynecki looks at her great-grandfather's paintings at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw with curators Teresa Śmiechowska and Jakub Bendkowski.

Undomesticated: You found many of the paintings on your own. Most efforts like this are undertaken with funding or support from major organizations. Who served as an inspiration or role model in your quest to find Rynecki paintings?

Rynecki: The film had significant financial support from a considerable number of private individuals as well as various non-profits including the Claims Conference, Taube Philanthropies, the Koret Foundation, and the Fleishacker Foundation. The whole list can be seen on my website.

It took me 10 years to make the documentary film. To believe in the project (and myself) for that long required a strong inner drive. I am, my husband says, relentless in my persistence and perseverance. At times it’s a fantastic quality (it helped me finish the book and film!) but at times it can be a bit much (everyone needs to occasionally give themselves a break!).

I am grateful to the many people who offered friendship, a shoulder to cry on, and words of wisdom over the years.

Undomesticated: In your book you write about the desire to document your search not just in words, but also through film. Can you talk a little about your film and how you went about producing it? It seems a lot more involved than writing.

Rynecki: I met a woman who once told me that writing a book seemed too hard and that she instead was going to make a film about her family’s story. I was polite and wished her luck but chuckled about it later. Making a film is not any easier than writing a book. The problems are just different. Writing a book is mostly a solitary activity. Making a film could be a solitary activity, but I relied heavily on others who taught me the ropes along the way. I was particularly fortunate to work with Slawomir Grunberg (my director of photography) who knew what shots my editor needed to make a great film. His footage was gorgeous, and he always filmed a variety of angles that gave my editor choices.

My favorite example of this is the day we visited the address in Warsaw where my great-grandfather lived before the war. The original building was gone, and a steel-and-glass building stood in its place. I needed footage that portrayed my mixed emotions of being there. Slawomir made maybe a dozen shots and then several years later in editing we married the footage with voice over and music; all to explain the location, set the mood, and move the story forward. There are many more moving parts in film than there are on the written page. That’s not to say that authors don’t handle complex issues, but the way you think about structuring a book is different than it is with film. Writing the book definitely helped me think about the film in unique ways, and vice versa. Ultimately the book and film are companion pieces.

Undomesticated: Your trip to Poland seemed especially difficult from an emotional standpoint. When my oldest son visited Auschwitz with his Israel study abroad program, we parents were asked to write letters to our kids so we could support them in spirit. Your father is a Holocaust survivor, and your great-grandfather was killed in the Holocaust. Can you talk a little about your decision to travel to a place that was the site of so much internal and external conflict?

Rynecki at Majdanek, the Nazi concentration camp where her great-grandfather perished.

Rynecki: I never wanted to go to Poland. I was terrified to go, not so much for my physical safety, but for my emotional well-being.

When it became clear that I had no choice but to go (the film wouldn’t have been very compelling if I had avoided it all together), I asked a good friend who had been involved in the project for several years to go with me. I am eternally grateful to Cathy for coming with me. She was enormously helpful with a wide range of logistics and provided me with much-needed emotional support.

Undomesticated: I’d like to talk about language and diaspora for a bit. In your book, I learned it was common for Polish Jews back then to speak Polish at home. I had always been under the impression that Eastern European Jews spoke Yiddish at home, much like how many immigrant families in the U.S. speak their mother tongue at home. Do you know if your family had issues with speaking the language of the oppressor after they settled in the U.S.? Or was there more of a desire to assimilate and that was why you didn’t grow up hearing Polish? I think sometimes Americans just assume immigrants speak the language of their new home because it’s expected of them, but could there be other reasons than just assimilation?

Rynecki: I think it’s fair to say that Polish Jews who lived in small communities and shtetls were more likely to speak Yiddish, but Jews who lived more assimilated lives in the cities were much more likely to speak Polish. It is my understanding that my great-grandfather spoke Polish, Yiddish, and some German.

I did grow up hearing Polish. Dad and his parents spoke Polish, particularly when they wished to discuss matters they didn’t want me (or Mom) to understand. I grew up thinking that all grandparents spoke a language other than English! Dad never taught me Polish (although he does love sharing Polish proverbs) in part because he didn’t think it was a useful language, but also because Mom didn’t speak Polish. I think it’s tough to teach a child a second language if only one parent speaks that language.

Undomesticated: Thank you. That’s all so interesting and I can see how that happens with many immigrant families. On a lighter note, in your book and documentary you showcase the leather boots that kept you going on your searches. Your trip was emotionally rigorous, and you must have turned to tangible comforts quite a bit. What can you tell us about the things that kept you going?

Rynecki: I didn’t realize what a big role my boots played in the story until we began editing the film. I wrote about it on my blog. It’s best read after seeing the film!

Although not a tangible comfort, the primary thing that kept me going was something Grandpa George wrote in his memoir:

Some say it will never happen again. Well, it's too easy. It did happen. They killed openly without fear. Where and how did they have that much hatred toward us? It could happen again. We cannot and will not forget. We will carry it, like the Bible, forever. There are hundreds of books on the subject. Nevertheless, I am a Jew and I write. I'll do it till the end of my days. If only for my granddaughter, Elizabeth, to know the truth, and not to be afraid of it. It's funny how we are not afraid to tell the truth.

Rynecki and art collector Edward Napiórkowski examine the Rynecki painting in his collection.

Undomesticated: Do you have plans to locate more Rynecki paintings in the years to come? Have you located more paintings since your book and film came out? What’s next for you?

Rynecki: I would love to locate more Rynecki paintings! Mostly it’s a waiting game — me waiting for people to step forward and to tell me they have his paintings.

I did recently hear from a woman who thought the paintings she inherited from a relative might be the early work of my great-grandfather. Dad is convinced they are Rynecki paintings. I find his arguments compelling but am aware that we will never know for sure.

I often get asked if there’s another film in my future. I don’t have another film up my sleeve, but I’d love to be involved in another docfilm, as long as I am not responsible for the financing. Raising funds was an incredibly challenging job.

I am working on a new book. It is part memoir, part narrative non-fiction, about Dad’s career as an ocean salvage engineer.

Undomesticated: Thank you so much for such an insightful conversation.

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