Transcript Holocaust Art Handout

Children as
well as adults
documented
events of the
Holocaust
through art.
In this child's
drawing, Jews
are shown
under armed
guard, being
pushed into a van which will take them to
deportation trains. Era: During WWII.
Artworks by Ghetto Artists
Yitzhok Brauner (1887-1944) SelfPortrait. Brauner was a painter in
the Lódz ghetto in 1943. The artist is
standing in the foreground of the
picture.
Roman Kramsztyk (1885-1942)
Old Jew with Children. This
drawing was made in the
Warsaw ghetto. Kramsztyk was
murdered by the Nazis in 1942.
Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) SelfPortrait. Schulz was a painter and
writer in the Drohobycz ghetto. He was
the author of Cinnamon Shops and
Sanatorium under the Hourglass. He
was murdered by
the Nazis in 1942.
Three months after Hitler came to power in 1938,
artists were forced to stop working. All Jewish
artwork was not allowed in museums and art
schools. Nazis stole much of the art and sold it for
a good profit; the rest was burned. Art was
considered a tool to the Nazis; it could make them
look good. After the war started, a lot of the art was
of German soldiers, landscapes, German youth,
noble wives and mothers. Art was no longer what
the artist wanted it to be; it was what the Nazis
wanted it to be.
Gela Seksztajn (1907-1942)
Self-Portrait. Seksztajn lived and
painted in the Warsaw ghetto. In
her will, which was preserved
along with her watercolors in the
underground archives of the
Warsaw ghetto, she wrote,
"...I am now standing at the boundary between life
and death. I already know for certain that I must die
and that is why I want to bid farewell to my friends
and to my work. Farewell, comrades and friends.
Jews! Do everything that such a tragedy will never
be repeated!" She died in Treblinka in August of
1942.
http://www.ilperetz.org/graduates/ana_benaroya.htm
http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/resource/gallery/ghetart.htm
http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/holocaust/art.htm
Holocaust Art
Inmate art to memorial art
http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/arts/art.htm
Nazi
propaganda
photo depicts
friendship
between an
"Aryan" and a
black woman.
The caption
states: "The
result! A loss of
racial pride."
Germany,
prewar.
Blacks during the Holocaust
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId
=10005479
Birkenau. Painting of Königsgraben from the ceiling of the
penal company barrack at Birkenau.
Photo credit: Florida Center for Instructional Technology.
The Königsgraben (King's canal) was the canal being dug to
drain swampy water away from Birkenau. A sign in the barrack
gives the following details. "A special penal company
(Strafkompanie)for men was housed in this barrack from May
1942 to July 1943. These were mainly political prisoners,
people for some reason considered particularly dangerous to
the Third Reich, prisoners found guilty of breaking camp
discipline, or those who were thought to be participating in the
camp's underground movement or planning to escape. They
were kept in complete isolation from the other prisoners; even
the daily roll-call and distribution of rations were done
separately in an enclosed yard next to the barrack. Conditions
in this unit were extremely harsh. Punishments were severe,
the workload murderous, and food rations reduced--all leading
to high mortality rate. One of the tasks of this unit was to dig
the main drainage ditch (Königsgraben). An original drawing of
this made by an unknown prisoner still remains on the ceiling of
this barrack."
http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/resource/gallery/FWALL.htm
Through work
to freedom
Father and Son
Jacques Gotko (Yakow Gotkowski) (1900-1943)
Watch Tower and the Camp’s Gate – A View through
the Barbed Wire Fences Compiègne Camp 1942
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/
Prisoners room
Prayer
Concert
Auschwitz
Shh – silence from the
cycle "Flowers of
Auschwitz"
http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/i
ndex.php?option=com_conte
nt&task=view&id=462&Itemid
=8
Music of the Holocaust
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/music/
Lou Albert-Lazard (Mabull) (1885-1969)
Women in the Evening in Gurs Gurs Camp 1940
http://art.holocaust-education.net/home.asp?langid=1&submenu=
Prisoners
Death of hunger
Today, it is hard for many people
to grasp the fact that imposing
works of art were created in
Auschwitz. It was a bold
undertaking for the Centrum
Judaicum to show the Art in
Auschwitz 1940-1945 exhibition
in Germany for the first time.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
opened the show in the
exhibition rooms of the New
Synagogue on Oranienburger
Strasse in Berlin on May 23,
2005.