Regal, beautiful, talented, feisty and fabulous, all of these adjectives describe Carlotta, and so many others. What words come to mind when you see her portrait? Carlotta has travelled the world, performing as a professional Ballerina at a very young age. She was born of French and Russian parents and grew up in Moscow. She was obsessed with Margot Fonteyn, who may be the all-time most famous ballerina in the world. Carlotta married into a very wealth family and now lives between Beijing, China, NYC, and Paris, France, where she has children, grandchildren and great grandchildren living all three cities. Carlotta, to me, exudes confidence, elegance and a bit of mischievousness. I want to be her when I grow up. ;)
​I chose today to post her Portrait because on this day in 1942, The German Army completed its encirclement of the Kharkov region of the Soviet Union. This is where many of Carlotta’s family lived, and, as Russian Jews, many of them were part of the mass murder of Jewish people at Auschwitz. Her talent as a promising Ballerina saved her, and her families lives, they were able to escape. I also post this because there is an extreme rise in antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews, and several in her family have experienced that hate first hands, as so many other friends of mine have. Don’t fall prey to the hate in this world, as humans, we should be above that, otherwise what separates us from animals?