Flight to Freedom - The story of a woman whose young face became a symbol of the Holocaust for Czech Jews as told through the eyes of photographer Jan Lukas

December 15, 2021 - March 03, 2022

Open: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 1-6 PM

Opening Reception: Tuesday December 14, 7PM 

Registration for the opening reception here.

The book Vendulka: Flight to Freedom will be presented by the author together with short reading and a following debate at the opening reception.

New-York based cellist Tamar Sagiv, recipient of the Zubin Mehta certificate of honor, will play the beautiful Arioso for Cello Solo by composer James Simon ( 1880-1944), who was imprisoned in Terezín and murdered in Auschwitz.

When Jan Lukas released the shutter of his camera on the eve of Vendulka’s transport to Terezin, he feared she might never return again. The image of her young face eventually became the symbol of the Holocaust but it did not have to turn out that way at all. Vendulka was Jewish and Lukas feared to develop the film and print the image because should the Nazis discover them, he would end up in a concentration camp just like her. And so he hid the film in the cellar until the war was over. The story of Vendulka is special because of the life-long and loyal friendship between her and the photographer. A friendship personified by the well-known photograph, and made special by the unbroken bond despite the long separations the two totalitarian regimes imposed on them. Jan Lukas helped Vendulka survive the hard winter of 1944-45 when he sent her a warm sweater to the work camp. As soon as he read her letter that she and her mother managed to smuggle out, he took it off and made a package together with other items they needed. Vendulka was able to return the help in 1965 when Jan Lukas with his family got stuck in an Italian refugee camp after escaping from communist Czechoslovakia.  And even later on when they arrived to New York, she was helpful to them in many ways. They supported each other, their destinies running in close parallels. Flight to Freedom  in not only a story about the Holocaust. It is also a story of extraordinary friendship and of mutual devotion. Even when facing mortal danger…

Jan Lukas

Jan Lukas (1915-2006), a legend in the world of Czech photographers, lived through two periods of totalitarianism. In the 1930s, his photos captured large and small events in Czech life and he is famous for his stylized images as well as portraits of important personalities. By the mid 1960’s, he made it to the United States of America, where he continued to apply his distinctive talents to also photograph everyday life. Karla and Šimon Vogel's friendship with the young photographer Jan Lukas began many years before the war. At that time, Vendulka's family still lived in Karlovy Vary, from where they moved to Prague after the violent activities of Sudeten German activists.

Ondřej Kundra

Ondřej Kundra (1980) is a journalist who, since 1999, has been working for Respekt, where he is a deputy editor-in-chief. He has won numerous journalism awards for political analysis and investigative reporting, including the prestigious Ferdinand Peroutka Prize. He is the author of Meda Mládková’s biography My Amazing Life (2014), a book about Russian spies; Putin’s Agents (2016), which was turned by Czech Radio into a radio book, and for which he received a nomination for the Magnesia Litera award. Together with Tomáš Lindner, he wrote the documentary book My Son the Terrorist (2017).

Helena Lukas Martemucci

Helena Lukas Martemucci was born in Prague in 1950 but since 1966 has lived in the USA and Italy. She earned Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, and Master of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania State University. In 1998-99, she spent a year in the Czech Republic asa Fulbright Scholar. She had taught photography at Penn State and at the Pantheon Institute in Rome. Her most recent exhibition of photographs called “Absent” was seen at the Artinbox Gallery in Prague, in 2020.

Pavel Štingl 

Documentary filmmaker, director, producer and university teacher Pavel Štingl was born on June 16, 1960 in Prague. He graduated from the Department of Documentary Filmmaking at FAMU in Prague and has made more than a hundred documentaries, for example, about political conflicts or the Holocaust, based on personal stories. He is the main driver of the project to turn the devastated Bubny railway station, from where the transports to Terezín left, into a Memorial of Silence.