Holocaust ArtInmate art to memorial art

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

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

Yitzhok Brauner (1887-1944) Self-Portrait. Brauner was a painter in the Lódz ghetto in 1943. The artist is standing in the foreground of the picture.

http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/resource/gallery/ghetart.htm

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) Self-Portrait. 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.

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.

Artworks by Ghetto Artists

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Children as well as adults documented events of the Holocaust through art. In this child's drawing, Jews are shownunder armed guard, beingpushed into a van which will take them to deportation trains. Era: During WWII.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/holocaust/art.htm

http://www.ilperetz.org/graduates/ana_benaroya.htm

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.

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Jacques Gotko (Yakow Gotkowski) (1900-1943)Watch Tower and the Camp’s Gate – A View through the Barbed Wire Fences Compiègne Camp 1942

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=http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/music/Music of the Holocaust

Father and Son

Prisoners

Prayer

Through work to freedom

Shh – silence from the cycle "Flowers of Auschwitz"

Prisoners room

Death of hunger

Concert Auschwitz

http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=462&Itemid=8

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.