Marc Chagall מוישע שאגאל
He brought the Jewish world of Eastern Europe into European art
The murals of the Moscow Jewish Chamber Theatre (1920–21), a hundred and five etchings for the Bible (1931–56), White Crucifixion (1938), the Hadassah windows in Jerusalem (1962), the Knesset tapestries (1964–69). From Vichy France he was got out by Varian Fry and the American Emergency Rescue Committee: on 10 June 1941 he sailed from Lisbon on the Mouzinho and was in New York on the 21st.
At his funeral at Saint-Paul-de-Vence his widow Valentina Brodsky said he had asked for no religious service; Kaddish was recited by a relative—without a minyan. Israel's ambassador to France came, and people from the Soviet embassy. The lovely tradition that an unknown Jew stepped from the crowd to say Kaddish over him is contradicted by JTA's contemporary report: it was a relative.
Sources
Scholarship
- JTA, the funeral report, 2 April 1985 — the request for no service; a relative's Kaddish without a minyan
- Wikipedia, “Marc Chagall”; the Emergency Rescue Committee lists — the sailing from Lisbon, 10 June 1941
Basis: documents and evidence.