In 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland, Moshe Rynecki realized that his paintings and sculptures were at risk of being destroyed. In an effort to protect and preserve his life's work, he bundled his collection of over 800 paintings and sculptures into a number of packages and distributed them to gentile friends in and around Warsaw. He told his family where the paintings were hidden so that after the war the family could collect the bundles and make the collection whole once again.
Unfortunately, Moshe perished in a Nazi concentration camp. When his surviving family went to retrieve the paintings, they were only able to find a single bundle. Today the Rynecki family has just over 100 of the original 800+ paintings; the rest of the collection is scattered or lost. Some paintings are known to be in museums and others with private collectors.
CHASING PORTRAITS, as seen below, is a 9 minute film about the Rynecki family's efforts to uncover the lost paintings of Moshe Rynecki, and about Elizabeth's (Moshe's great-grandaughter) personal journey to better understand her great-grandfather. The Rynecki family is in the process of pursuing the making of a full length documentary film.