To many, the paint­ings of Samuel Bak rep­re­sent the Holo­caust. Not only are they beau­ti­ful­ly paint­ed in an Old Mas­ter style, but their images of Holo­caust dev­as­ta­tion and tragedy are mov­ing and unfor­get­table. Many of us are famil­iar with the pho­to­graph of a young boy in the War­saw Ghet­to, arms raised in sur­ren­der— his inno­cence vio­lat­ed by a Ger­man SS point­ing a gun at him. Although this par­tic­u­lar child hap­pened to sur­vive, Bak uses his image in a series of paint­ings to rep­re­sent all the chil­dren of the Shoah, most of whom per­ished. Cyn­thia Ozick’s com­ments on Bak’s paint­ings of the boy in vari­a­tions of the theme and set­tings, but always with his hands up, are so apt that I usurp them here in a par­tial quo­ta­tion: “…Nev­er, nev­er, nev­er was pity so twinned with out­rage, or vision­ary image-mak­ing so unit­ed with unfor­giv­ing his­tor­i­cal fact…In Bak’s work there is absolute knowl­edge; I think he must under­stand that his eye and his hand are anoint­ed.” List of Bak exhibits, gal­leries, muse­ums and films.