Shlomit Mintz: from Hungary to Israel to Massachusetts
Shlomit named her most important painting “A Phoenix Rising From the Ashes.” The painting is her story.
The ashes are the story of being born to a Jewish family in Hungary in 1931, and of Germany entering Hungary and disappearing her father off the face of the Earth. It is the horror of things getting worse and worse until the unimaginable occurs, such as being held at gunpoint and witnessing crimes that no child should know of. Her story includes saying goodbye to her mother and making promises they both knew they would not be able to keep. It includes getting a late-night knock on the door with news that if you want to escape, you must leave the very next morning. And finally she arrives in Israel feeling alone and searching every face for her father, believing against all odds he would be there.
This story was unspeakable to Shlomit for many years. She was able to talk about it decades later only because of her daughter’s request.
The phoenix in the painting is Shlomit. She lived in a kibbutz in Israel for 10 years and met the love of her life. They were married 65 years and built a beautiful life and family together. From Israel, they moved to Dorchester and then Mattapan, where her husband had family.
Shlomit fell in love with poetry — she says it shows her what it means to be human. And she learned to paint. Hanging in her apartment are delicate botanical paintings, just like a set of cards her father had given her before he was taken away.
“For me, the greatest longing is belonging,” says Shlomit. In her apartment at 2Life’s Golda Meir House, surrounded by a community humbled by her kindness, it is safe to say that she belongs.
