Tag #120675 - Interview #98621 (Roza Benveniste)

I had an art teacher, Miss Zukofki. I thank God for the good teachers he has given me. She was from Belarus, and her husband was an army general. The tsar baptized him. While she was in Thessaloniki she taught at the Lycée Francais. She would come to my fathers’ shop to buy clothes for her husband. At school I really liked to take a piece of paper and make portraits of my schoolmates. My father took my drawings and showed them to her, and she told him that I had a talent, so she started coming home to teach me. She taught me drawing and pyrography [art of decorating wood or other materials with burn marks by applying a heated object.]

I made a small shovel with its brush like the ones we have for the table, on top of which I had put some leaves. I also made a few things from leather. I liked them very much and so did the Germans because they took everything that we had left in the house. I made this board, which was a basket with strawberries, and it was a very successful piece.