At the exhibition in Synagogue Maribor, we present Roman Erich Petsche as an artist and a man with a capital letter.
Roman Erich Petsche was born in 1907 in Kočevje in a family of Kočevje Germans. After the First World War, the family emigrated to Austria. Petsche was awarded the title of “magister artium” at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, and later taught art and technical education for many years. In 1944, he was stationed in Novi Sad as a Wehrmacht soldier, where one of the most important stories of his life took place: he saved Jewish girls Eva and Mira Tibor from the Holocaust, and in 1982 Yad Vashem awarded him the Righteous Among the Nations award for this courageous act.
The exhibited works of art are from the collections of the Gottscheer Gedenkstätte and the Kočevje Regional Museum. The initiator of the exhibition, Mihael Petrovič Jr., will present the artist and his work at the virtual opening, and Vesna Jerbič Perko, director of the Kočevje Regional Museum, will also address the audience. A special guest of the opening will be Vladimir Todorović, a representative of the NGO Danubius and the Jewish Community of Novi Sad.
The preparation of the visiting exhibition, which will be on display at Synagogue Maribor until 31st of August 2021, was supported by the Municipality of Maribor and the Embassy of the State of Israel.
