Local Teens Curate Holocaust Survivor’s Tapestries on Concentration Camp Experience

Two Pasadena teenagers are being credited with making a Holocaust survivor’s dreams come true by curating a collection of the woman’s tapestries depicting the nightmare of her life as a child in a Nazi concentration camp.

The tapestries were created by 82-year-old Trudie Strobel of San Marino. 

The exhibit, “A Life in Tapestry,” chronicling Jewish history and Strobel’s memories of the Holocaust through her intricately detailed creations, has already been on display at Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena and is now set to be shown again, this time at the Slutzky Art Gallery at the Merage Jewish Community Center in Irvine.

The tapestries were curated for exhibition by 18-year-old Pasadena residents Lila Dworsky-Hickey and Maya Savin Miller.

Miller was 12 and doing research for her bat mitzvah project, which eventually led her to Strobel and her tapestries.

“I walked into Trudie’s home not expecting anything,” Miller, now a senior at Polytechnic High School in Pasadena, told the OC Register.

“Her house is like a museum,” Miller said. “I knew from that first meeting that Trudie’s story and the artwork had to be shared with the world.”

Three years later, Miller learned about the Dragon Kim Foundation, started by the parents of Dragon Kim, a musician who was 14 when he was killed by a falling tree branch while camping in Yosemite.

The Kims established a fellowship to help creative high school students with a vision to make a positive change in their communities.

Dworsky-Hickey and Miller were selected for a fellowship, the newspaper reported, and received $5,000 and mentorship to curate an exhibit of Strobel’s tapestries.

“At a time when it felt like the nation was becoming increasingly polarized, we believed that we needed reminding about what led to the Holocaust: intolerance, racism, people being unwilling to speak up about injustices in their society,” said Grace Kim, Dragon Kim’s mother. “Trudie’s story of surviving the Holocaust was an important one that needed to be told, so that we don’t repeat the horrific mistakes made at that time.”

The exhibition is not yet on display to the general public due to coronavirus restrictions.

After the war, Strobel couldn’t bring herself to speak of being a young child in a Nazi concentration camp. Her depression led to a breakdown 30 years ago, after which a therapist said she should try to share her experience through art.   

Strobel began creating tapestries, which ultimately numbered in the dozens, all depicting Jewish history, including the Holocaust. She only showed friends her handiwork.

Strobel credits the two teens and the Dragon Foundation for having her tapestries on display.

“When I finished a piece, I always thought, wouldn’t it be nice if more people could see it, never thinking this would happen to me until I met this wonderful Miller family with Maya and her interest,” Strobel told the Register. “She was really determined that my work should be shown. To have this in her mind to want to do something like that is really amazing.”

In a graphic tapestry in the exhibit, “Final Destination,” Strobel illustrates her memories of imprisonment in a Nazi camp. 

“That piece is incredible and I think is a piece of history and honestly a gift to my generation and future generations who won’t be alive at the same time as Holocaust survivors, who can hear Trudie’s story through her art,” Miller said. “I just think it is so important in preserving this history and it serving as a reminder both of the perils of intolerance and the healing powers of art.”