The Pushkin Club invites you to join Yelena Lembersky for a presentation of Like A Drop of Ink in a Downpour, a memoir written by her and her mother, Galina Lembersky. The memoir traces Yelena and Galina’s experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, exploring the bond between mother and daughter, the realities faced by Jews in the USSR, and the value of art and culture as a means of truth, hope and political resistance.
Like A Drop of Ink in a Downpour has just been nominated for the National Jewish Book Award.
Yelena and Galina grew up in a Soviet Jewish family, the daughter and granddaughter of the painter Felix Lembersky, who painted the earliest known depictions of the Nazi massacres of the Jews at Babyn Yar and whose parents died in Berdichev in the Holocaust. The family began planning to emigrate to the US. Yelena’s grandmother managed to leave with Felix’s paintings, but before Yelena and her mother could join her Galina was arrested and sent to a prison camp on false charges.
Yelena and Galina paint a vivid portrait of the life of women and children in the Soviet Union, giving us an insider’s understanding of the roots of contemporary Russia. Yelena’s coming-of-age story converges with her mother’s perspective and both women fill the gaps of each others’ stories – whether Yelena was too young to remember, or Galina had chosen to forget.
Their determination to preserve and share their family story runs deeper than just their own experiences. Felix Lembersky’s paintings are a visual testimony to the Holocaust, an episode of history which was purposefully ignored by the Soviet regime — and thanks to the women’s efforts, his works are no longer hidden in the family apartment for secretive viewings, but have been shared with audiences across the world.
About the SPEAKER
Yelena Lembersky is an author, architect and project leader at the Uniterra Foundation, dedicated to promoting cultural understanding around the world. Her first book, Felix Lembersky: Paintings and Drawings, is devoted to her grandfather, a prominent Soviet artist best known for his nonfigurative work that resisted Soviet mandate for Socialist Realism and Execution: Babi Yar canvases, the earliest artistic representation of the massacre. His work is in the holding of public and private collections in the US and Russia. Pushkin House organized his exhibition in 2013.