Gail Rosenbloom Kaplan Honored
Gail Rosenbloom Kaplan, BFA, ‘76, eminent artist and resident of Farmington Hills, MI is this year’s Honoree for the 25th Anniversary Dinner on Sunday, October 18, for the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus (HMCZFC), Farmington Hills, MI.
Gail served as exhibit developer and project organizer for the poignantly powerful exhibit, “The Kindertransport Memory Quilts”, an installation in the HMCZFC’s Harry and Wanda Zekelman International Institute of the Righteous. Kindertransport (Children’s Transport) was the name given to rescue efforts that brought 10,000 refugee Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain between 1938 – 1939. A daughter of a Kindertransport child, Anita Grosz, wished to learn more about her father’s childhood and also allow other Kinder the opportunity to share their experiences. Her mother, Kirsten Grosz, an avid quilter, asked Kinders to provide a square which portrayed their Kindertransport experience — leaving family and friends behind and being alone in a new culture with a strange language. She pieced the quilt blocks together.
Gail learned about the quilt from Merry Silber, a quilt collector and Hans Weinman, a Kindertransport Survivor. Together they realized the quilts needed a permanent home. An agreement was reached for the quilts to come to HMCZFC as a permanent exhibit.
Gail’s work has been on exhibition at the Taubman Gallery in the University of Michigan Hospital; the Hechinger Collection at the National Building Museum, Washington, DC, United States Embassy Collection and the United States Embassies in Brazil and in Norway.