Mina Gampel

Mina Gampel was born in 1940 in Pinsk into a Jewish family. Pinsk was a small Jewish shtetl in Poland, today located in Belarus. After the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, her family fled with nine-month-old Mina beyond the Ural Mountains. It was only through this timely escape that they survived the Holocaust.
One year after the end of the war, in 1946, the family moved to Szczecin in Poland, where Mina attended school until she earned her secondary certificate. She later married there. In 1957, Mina emigrated to Israel, where she had three children. In 1967, she moved to Germany and, since 1969, has lived and worked in Stuttgart, spending many years as a kindergarten teacher.
Mina studied at the Esslingen Academy of Art and the European Academy of Fine Arts in Trier, and since 1993 has been a lecturer at the Esslingen Academy of Art. Since 2007, she has pursued studies in art history, history, and philosophy at the University of Stuttgart’s continuing education program. Her artistic work is diverse, but always centers on people—whether within crowds or in fleeting, unnoticed moments. Often their faces remain hidden, sparking the viewer’s curiosity.
Mina has only recently begun to speak publicly as a Jewish contemporary witness of the Holocaust. Two years ago, she met Birgit Mair, who, through the Institute for Social Science Research, Education, and Consultation (ISFBB) e.V., provides professional support to survivors visiting schools.