Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

During World War I, Liepaja was taken over as a military port, and Esther Lurie and her family was forced to move to Riga.

Esther Lurie visited kibbutzim, where she drew landscapes, portraits, dancers and musicians.

In 1937, Esther Lurie held her first exhibition at kibbutz Geva קיבוץ גבע.

In 1938, Esther Lurie was accepted as a member of the Painters and Sculptors Association of Palestine, and she held exhibitions in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa.

In 1941, the Gestapo deemed Esther Lurie's work as "Jewish art" and confiscated it, and later that year, she was forced to move to the Kovno ghetto Kauno getas.

During the liquidation of the Kovno Ghetto Kauno getas, Esther Lurie was separated from other family members, who were transported to Auschwitz, where they perished,

In August 1944, Esther Lurie was sent with 1,200 other female inmates to a forced labor camp for women at Leibitz, where she recorded everything she saw.

On January 21, 1945, Esther Lurie was liberated in Leibitz, by the Red Army, and because she had Palestinian citizenship, she was attached to a group of liberated British POWs.
She worked as an interpreter, and lived in a camp in Italy, before she was repatriated to Palestine.