An album with a collection of photographs from the Cyprus detention camps, documenting mainly the children's home in the summer camps in Karaolos. Cyprus, 1946-1949.
Approx. 80 photographs depicting the lives of the detainees in the Cyprus camps, documenting mainly the children's home that was established in the "summer camps" in Karaolos – camps 60-63 – and which was known as "Kaytanat Elez" (literally: Joy Summer School).
The photographs are mounted and captioned on the leaves. The captions, combined with the order of the photographs, form a comprehensive picture of the daily life of the children detained in Cyprus. Depicting the arrival at the camps and the establishment of the children's home under the supervision of nurses who were sent from Palestine and the children's lives – school classes and recesses, teachers and students, kindergartens, Purim celebrations, games and group activities, sea-bathing, meals, resting and bathing, the kitchen, gifts from school children in South Africa, birthday parties, and more. The photographs also depict various aspects of the life in the camps in general: assemblies, demonstrations for the right to immigrate to Palestine, various administrative buildings, the kitchen, the washrooms, the visit of the well-known Yiddish singer Sidor Belarsky to the camps, workers assembly, water supply by a JOINT-sponsored truck, and more.
The album ends with the evacuation of the camps and the immigration to Israel, emphasizing the tribulations the illegal immigrants experienced when leaving the camps and the exacting screening by UN representatives whose role was to ascertain the immigrants' age; the rules of immigration determined that men fit for service will not be permitted to enter the young state of Israel lest they give it an advantage over its neighbors.
Several of the photographs were commercially produced in the camps of Cyprus, including a photographic "Shanah Tovah" greeting card, signed in the plate "Foto Pais" and a photographic "Regards from Cyprus" greeting card (Hebrew), also bearing the inscription "Lehagshmah" (to fulfillment).
Photographs: size and condition vary. Good overall condition. Album: 16.5X26 cm. Good condition. Stains. Creases. Small tears to leaves and tissue guards, some repaired. New binding. Missing one photograph.
Provenance: The Rimon Family Collection.

Stone candlestick made in the Cyprus detention camps, by sculptor Nahman Vikrovitzky. Cyprus, 5708 (1947/1948).
Rock gypsum, chiseled and engraved.
A candlestick shaped as the Hebrew letter "צ" with two indentation for candles. In the opening of the "צ" are the Hebrew letters י.ו.ן forming the Hebrew word ציון – "Zion".
The front of the candlestick is decorated with bunches of grapes and a view of David's Tower, and on its back is the Hebrew inscription "Cyprus 5708". The candlestick is placed on a square stone base decorated with bunches of grapes and a view of the Western Wall.
The sculptor Nahman Vikrovitzky (1924-2016), was born in Stolin (then Poland). On the eve of Rosh HaShanah 1942, his parents and all his family were murdered by the Nazis together with most of the Jewish population of the town. After the Holocaust, he tried to immigrate to Palestine on the illegal immigrant ship SS Theodor Herzl, which sailed from France on April 2, 1947, and was caught opposite the shore of Tel-Aviv. During his imprisonment in Cyprus, which lasted about a year and a half, Vikrovitzky sculpted in wood and stone. In Cyprus there were two groups of artists: the first consisted of students of the professional art workshops taught by Ze'ev Ben Zvi, Naftali Bezem and Chana Liberman, whose works of art tended to be expressionist and received artistic prestige, and who were appropriately equipped with hammers and chisels for working with stone. The second group was that of the 'amateur' artists whose works were considered by the first group as 'folkloristic' and simplistic. Vikrovitzky belonged to the second group and made his own work tools from nails, cans and other objects.
After Vikrovitzky immigrated to Israel, he commemorated the victims of the Holocaust in sculptures he exhibited in various venues. In 1993 he was awarded the Hermann Struck Prize of the Haifa Municipality for his works of art commemorating the Holocaust.
For additional information about art in the detention camps in Cyprus see enclosed material:
1. Cyprus, the Art of Life: The Detention Camps, 1946-1949. Tel-Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2017.
2. The Handiworks of the Cyprus Exiles Illegal Immigrants, by Ya'akov Koren (Hebrew), in the Israeli Numismatic Collector's Association newspaper [no year].
Height: 15 cm. Dimensions of base: 14X12 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes to edges. Glue to prevent slippage on the lower side of the stone base.
Provenance: The Rimon Family Collection.