Charlotta Burešová

Charlotta Burešová (, 4 November 1904 – 1983), also known as Lotka, was a Czech Jewish painter and Holocaust survivor. Her watercolour portrait paintings recorded imprisonment in the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Biography Burešová was born on 4 November 1904 in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, where her father Gustav Kompert was employed as a tailor. She was also known as Lotka.

In 1924, Burešová married Christian lawyer Radim Bureš and they had a son together in 1927, called Radim after his father. In March 1939, Buresova divorced her husband in the hope of protecting their half-Jewish son from antisemitic persecution under Nazi occupation. Burešová was interned in the Theresienstadt Ghetto from 20 July 1942. While in the ghetto, she was forced to work at the Lautscher Werkstätte producing postcards, greeting cards and copies of works painted by the Old Masters, particularly by Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt. These were sold outside of the ghetto by the Nazis, who kept the proceeds.

Burešová's bright watercolour portrait paintings recorded children, dancers, musicians and flowers in the ghetto, in contrast to the conditions and suffering around her. She received art supplies and food parcels from her former husband and also drew with charcoal.

After liberation from the ghetto on 3 May 1945, Burešová returned to Prague and remarried her husband.

Burešová's work The Last Flamenco is held in the permanent art exhibition at Israel's Yad Vashem. Over fifty of her works from the ghetto and three of her post-war works are held in the Terezín Memorial’s art collections.