In the 1st panel of Children Dream of Peace, the figure of war stands over children as it attempts to destroy the dove of peace. My father painted the figure of war, the dove, the bombed out building, and the woman with the baby.

​

WHY DID WE PAINT THESE IMAGES?

​

       LETICIA TANGUMA: I painted many of the refugees, some of the destroyed walls, and the three main children who are sleeping, in which a “dream mist” rises. While I painted these images and explained them to the people who visited us at the Lakeside studio and at the airport, I often thought, and spoke, in general, about the children and teenagers that I worked with at crisis centers and at shelters in Denver. I remember teenagers who belonged to different gangs, such as Skin Heads and Crips, and how they would leave their gang lingo and attitude outside and come inside the shelter peacefully. They did not fight or threaten each other. Sometimes, they spoke to each other as if they were good friends.

        At one of the places I worked at for smaller children, four-year-olds and eight-year-olds who had been admitted there because of severe abuse, at bed time, would cry for their mother or father. They would ask, “Why did my mother hit me?” “Why did she choke me?” Why did my father burn me?” “Why did he rape me?” I cried with them, especially when they also stated things like, “ I still love Mommy.” “I still want to be with my parents.”

         These children and teenagers still dreamed of peace despite living through abuse and the dangers of the streets. Any person who has ever worked with children or has experienced abuse knows, that as children, we ask these questions, and still yearn, still dream of love, and still dream of peace.

​

Children of the world dream of peace.

 

        I have shared what inspired me to paint this part of the mural. The famous poem by 14-year-old Hana Herchenberg, who died on December 18, 1943 in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, was one of many inspirations to my father, LEO TANGUMA.

                                               Young Hana’s poem sings a generation’s cry:

​

I once was a little child who longed for other worlds. But I am no more a child for I have known fear. I have learned to hate. How tragic, then, is youth which lives with enemies, with gallows ropes.  Yet I still believe I only sleep today. That I’ll wake up a child again, and start to laugh and play.

​

In the mural, despite the horror of abuse and that of war, the children dream of peace and yearn desperately for safety, love, and friendship. They yearn not to hate.

​

A rainbow “mist” above the children in the mural represents their “dream”.