by Michelle Mullen<\/p>\n
A set of drawings created by a Holocaust survivor in 1945 is now on display at Manhattan University, after spending decades hidden in a worn black briefcase tucked inside a closet \u2014 a piece of history quietly waiting to be found.<\/p>\n
Before moving into their new Scarsdale home, Ken and Helene Orce undertook significant renovations, tearing out walls and reworking rooms. In one room, an unusual closet extended awkwardly along a wall. When it came time to remove it, the discovery came as a surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe closet in one of the rooms we were ripping out,\u201d Helene said. \u201cAnd Ken was kind of putzing around because he didn\u2019t like what [contractors] were doing. And when he pulled at something in the closet, this briefcase fell on his head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside was a carefully packed archive, fragile and browned with age, containing more than two dozen sketches in colored pencil, along with photographs and documents.<\/p>\n
The drawings, later identified as the work of Marcel Roux, a member of the French Resistance \u2014 a network of underground groups that opposed Nazi occupation in France \u2014 who was captured by Nazis as a political prisoner, not a Jewish detainee. <\/p>\n
While imprisoned, Roux documented scenes of starvation, violence and survival inside Langenstein-Zwieberge, a subcamp of Buchenwald in Germany, where he was held and forced into hard labor.<\/p>\n
At first, the Orces did not fully grasp what they had found.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was fascinating,\u201d Orce said. \u201cWe were just looking at them, and not having any personal connection with the Holocaust. It wasn\u2019t quite as disturbing to us in the beginning, until we began to study it, and thought, \u201cOh, my God, this is real.\u201d<\/p>\n
The drawings themselves form a visual record of daily life inside the camp. In one, a prisoner in striped uniform is beaten. In another, skeletal figures gather around bodies already reduced to skin and bones. Others show men standing in line for food, or collapsing under the weight of forced labor.<\/p>\n
They were created in the final weeks of the war, after American troops liberated the camp and Roux, then in his early 40s, began to record what he had endured. He was not a trained artist. The materials appear on thin, sometimes lined scrap paper.<\/p>\n
Each drawing was inscribed in French to \u201cmy friend, Captain Epstein,\u201d a reference to Dr. William Epstein, a U.S. Army physician who served in a field hospital unit that treated survivors after liberation, including Roux. The case in which the drawings were found appeared to belong to the doctor, who later built a career in New York.<\/p>\n
Alongside the sketches were personal items, among them postcards, photographs of landscapes and military aircraft, newspaper clippings and handwritten notes. <\/p>\n
The Orces learned that the home they purchased had belonged to Epstein\u2019s wife, Ruth, who had moved out and left the case behind. When they reached out through a caretaker to see if she or her family wanted the contents returned, the answer was no. The briefcase, and everything inside it, remained.<\/p>\n
For 32 years, the drawings sat in a file cabinet in the Orces\u2019 home. They showed them to friends and family, occasionally revisiting the question of what to do with them. At times, Helene said, they considered throwing them out, unsure of their significance or where they might belong. Each time, they hesitated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said, no, we can\u2019t dump this,\u201d she explained. \u201cThis has got to go somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
They reached out to several institutions, including museums and Holocaust archives, but often encountered a similar response: the drawings could be accepted into collections, but would likely remain in storage, unseen by the public. <\/p>\n
Instead, they decided to hold onto the sketches, waiting for the right place.<\/p>\n
That opportunity emerged through Manhattan University, where Kenneth is an alumnus. The drawings were brought to the university\u2019s Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center, where Mehnaz Afridi, the center\u2019s director, began to study them. What followed was part research, she said, and part reconstruction.<\/p>\n
Afridi contacted archives in the United States and abroad, including major Holocaust research centers, piecing together what could be known about Roux and the camps he passed through. <\/p>\n
At the same time, Afridi began examining the drawings themselves. Initially, they appeared as individual scenes. But as she laid them out and studied them more closely, a pattern emerged.<\/p>\n
\u201cI put them on the ground and started looking,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then I realized there was a sequence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The images, when arranged in a particular order, traced a progression that echoed documented accounts of camp life: morning roll call, the distribution of meager food, forced labor, punishment, execution and burial. What Roux had created was not only a series of sketches, but a narrative.<\/p>\n
Today, that narrative is on display at Manhattan University. To protect the originals \u2014 which remain brittle, with frayed edges and fading pigment \u2014 the exhibition features high-resolution reproductions. The originals are stored in protective archival materials, shielded from light and handling.<\/p>\n
The exhibit itself is intentionally restrained. White frames and minimal text allow the drawings to stand on their own, without distraction. Visitors move from image to image, following the sequence Roux left behind.<\/p>\n
For Afridi, the project is both scholarly and deeply personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost like he was trying to tell his story the only way he could,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that was through these drawings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even now, questions remain. Little is known about Roux\u2019s life beyond the camps. Researchers continue to search archives in France and elsewhere, hoping to piece together more of his biography. New leads have begun to surface, including connections to other families whose relatives were present in the same field hospital unit, according to Afridi.<\/p>\n
The drawings themselves, however, remain the most direct record. They offer a perspective shaped not by hindsight, but by an attempt to capture what had been endured in real time.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tKeywords<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tHolocaust survivor drawings,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Marcel Roux,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Manhattan University exhibit,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Scarsdale discovery,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t hidden briefcase history,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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