In Samuel Bak’s works, the key also symbolises all those who died during the Holocaust. We remember them through the image of a redundant key – a modest but eloquent symbol of lost home and lost life. The key is also one of the symbols of divine power: with the key we can un-lock the ‘door separating heaven and earth’, the key opens the gate to a parallel world, and it can unlock memories and ‘resurrect’ the dear people who are already gone.

Ruins of the city as far as the eye can see with no living spirit around. Still angels visit the place and spread hope where it no longer exists. Biblical angels are the messengers of heaven on earth, the gospellers of divine knowledge. Where an angel appears, suffering is relieved and loneliness melts away.

There are many trees in Bak’s works. Among them there is a burning bush of Moses, and clumps of trees hanging weightlessly and surrounding the islands of flying houses, including felled but supported and thus still standing trees or trees that are about to sink down the slope that has been washed away by a river... All these trees are our last refuge and an integral part of the world around us, making us wonder whether we care enough about the surrounding environment.

Chess pieces were depicted by many artists. In medieval and renaissance art, the capture of the king piece symbolised defeat and the bishop standing next to the queen was a symbol of an af-fair between a lady and a servant. In Bak’s artwork, the moves of the bishop, horse and other pieces reflect global conflicts of various scales. The world of chess allows to experiment. It is a game of two opponents – we have a rival we are competing against. And it is solely up to us to choose who to identify with – the horse, the bishop, or maybe the king.

The dreidel game played by the Jews when celebrating Hanukkah is similar to a gambling dice. Dreidel (teetotum) is used to play the whirligig game all over the world. At Hanukkah, even rabbis allow the game that determines success to be played. The most important thing is to twist it skilfully and not be concerned about which side the dreidel will drop on. A spinning dreidel symbolises the universe and life. The game brings the family and the community together.

Samuel Bak’s life is full of losses: all his grandparents perished during the Holocaust, and his fa-ther was shot in the last days of the war. No loved ones were left from the stable period in his life. While painting still lifes, Bak attempts to assemble the picture of the lost world from shreds: to restore the contours of the bedside table that stood next to his grandparents’ bed or the shape of the cup from which his parents drank to the smallest detail. It will never be a ‘photograph’ of the lost world, but the painting process helps to overcome the feeling of lone-liness and resurrect the past in one's mind.

Once upon a time, one historian compared the non-existent Jewish Vilnius with a shining star, which eventually faded. My city today lives in its innumerable reflections – prose, poetry, music and art. They are pale, but still shining – enough to inspire me to create,’ writes Bak in his memoirs. It is art in all its manifestations that can help us feel spiritual abundance, to preserve the cultural environment of the hometown that no longer exists.

For Samuel Bak’s Adam and Eve, paradise and expulsion from it are just fading memories. In his artwork, the artist assigns them various ‘roles’ and turns them into poor inhabitants of the sht-etl, a stylishly dressed modern couple, the hiding victims of the Holocaust, or into those whose God-given commandment has been broken, including those who have broken the command-ments themselves. The couple is looking for their destiny trying to adapt to the modern world. As we look at Adam and Eve, we identify with them – the prototype of the first people in the modern world heavily battered by history.