The MURANOW STREET TROLLEY CAR in the WARSAW GHETTO

Drawn from a photo in the book The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - 45th Anniversary (Interpress, Warsaw, 1988) this drawing became the first drawing of the Under the Wings of God © series. The photo is in the chapter "Life in the Ghetto."

The artist was struck by the three figures: the conductor and two men on either side of the of the front of the trolley, all of whom, he contemplated, probably went up in smoke in the gas chambers or died in the ghetto, itself a concentration camp where over one-hundred thousand people died in 1941. The trolley itself would have been removed by the Nazi's for its valuable metal.

Ulica (Polish for street) Muranowska was a well-known street in the old Jewish quarter of Warsaw. After drawing the trolley, Segan was transfixed by its innocence — surrounded by the white space of the drawing paper, and decided to add wings. The two wings were drawn on subsequent visits to the Burke Museum of Natural History at the University of Washington in Seattle. After completing the wings he had his photographer take a photo, and he made an 8x10" black and white print. It reproduced so well at that size that Segan decided to create a drawing series based on archival and family photos.