“The seed of a creative idea does not die in mud and scum. Even there it will germinate
and spread its blossom like a star shining in darkness.” - Petr Ginz, 1928-1944
Art can be an excellent gate for teachers to use as a way of introducing the subject
of the Holocaust to their students. Art is very interpretive, students can understand it
in very different ways, and it also lends itself to interesting and deep conversations.
The great thing about using art in your classroom is that the teacher doesn't need to be an
artist or art historian, the artwork really lends itself to interpretation and conversation,
and there's no right and wrong answer in how you interpret a piece of art.
Another great thing about using art in your classroom is that it raises questions seldom asked when
you just deal with an historical subject. Because the student is relating, because the
student is looking and giving feedback, it can take their understanding
of the subject to a wholly different level.
There are several points to take into consideration
before a teacher uses a piece of art, and I think the most important one is the context
of where that art was created.
Artwork created during the Holocaust was made in ghettos,
it was made in concentration camps, it was made by people who were starving, people who
had no strength, people who didn't have paper and pencils, people who didn't have access
to art supplies, and yet, that need to create was so strong that artwork was created.
Unlike seeing the works of Picasso or Vermeer, when you look at a piece of Holocaust artwork,
you have to understand the circumstances of the artist who created it. You have to know
their biography, if we know anything about the artist, to give context to the drawings
or paintings we're looking at.
So artists use different means and media to
express themselves. Sometimes, an artist would use a portrait as a way of remembering a human
being instead of a photograph, a way of saying "this person lived, this person left some
kind of imprint on the planet." Sometimes, art was used in a very sarcastic way, as a
way of belittling the people who are making them suffer so much, humanizing them. Sometimes,
art was a way of the artist to express his inner world, a world that was trapped inside,
and not a world of the ghetto. And sometimes art came as a way of documenting the horrors
that were happening around them. So it's important to understand the motivation in the artist
creating the piece. Usually we can only guess, we can only infer what the artist meant unless
the artist left a clear manifesto of what his ideas were, we are just left with open-ended
questions. We have to remember that Holocaust art does not represent the whole of the Holocaust;
it never can, because most of what was created was lost. What we have left are little fragments,
little bits and pieces.
To appreciate and understand a piece of artwork,
there are questions that one may ask to approach that work, and kind of enter it.
The first thing we want to know is: what is the subject? Is the artist showing an individual? Is the
artist showing an event? Is the artist showing a space or a place? What was his purpose for
making the artwork? Is he bearing witness? Is he showing a feeling or an emotion?
Is he trying to capture a scene? Is he escaping through his artwork from the world that is surrounding
him? What is the purpose of the artwork?
The next thing the viewer wants to think about is the composition.
Artists don't just stick a piece of work on a page; they purposely
put it in different parts of the page to create a feeling or create a message. Where did the
artist put the main element? Is it in the middle, is it on the side, how does one's
eye move from place to place in the picture? Colors also play a very important part in
the artist's visual language. Are the colors solemn, dark, brooding? Or are they light, happy,
vibrant? The color choice by the artist is very deliberate. What are the artist's feelings
about his subject? How is he representing that subject on his medium? How does the artist
choose to create that drawing? Is he using agitated lines and strokes? Is it expressive?
Or does he choose a more classical, precise way of showing his subject?
All these are questions that can be a springboard for a very meaningful discussion
in the classroom with your students.
The Yad Vashem website offers numerous online
exhibitions, featuring artwork from the Yad Vashem collection, plus teachers can find
educational material on our educational site, dealing with Holocaust art.
Felix Nussbaum was a German Jewish artist who became a refugee in Belgium after the
Nazis came to power in 1933. On the eve of World War II, most countries in the world
refused to accept Jewish refugees. Nussbaum painted "The Refugee" as a way to demonstrate
his plight as a Jew who had no place to go.
Nussbaum uses very dark, muted colors; he
imparts a feeling of hopelessness, despair, loss. The first thing we see when we look
at this painting is an enormous globe. The globe is dark, it's in shadow; it gives us
also a feeling of hopelessness. What does this globe symbolize? Does it show us a world
that is entering a very dark period? Does it show us a world that is no longer open
to people who are trying to find a place for themselves?
The globe is sitting on a table,
that's shown in a very sharp, strange perspective, and the viewer's eye is taken to the very
corner of this dark, morgue-like room, to a figure bent over in despair. Who's the figure?
Is it supposed to represent Felix Nussbaum himself, a man who no longer has a country?
Does the figure represent the "wandering Jew"? At his feet are a stick and a bundle.
Jews no longer have a place in Europe. Jews no longer have a place on the planet.
As the viewer's eyes move around the canvas, they try to go out the door to the left but this
door doesn't offer salvation either. It's a very bleak landscape featuring trees with
no leaves and very dark birds flying in the sky. We know from Jewish funerary art that
a tree with no leaves on it symbolizes a life cut short, and as we look at this picture,
we're left with a feeling of despair and hopelessness. Nussbaum never abandoned painting; he painted
obsessively until 1944, when he and his wife were captured by the Nazis. They were sent
to Auschwitz and murdered.
Halina Olomucki was born in 1919 in Warsaw, Poland. Her drawings are some of the very
few that survived to bear witness to the Warsaw Ghetto.
Let's look at the face of this young boy. He doesn't look like a healthy child. His
eyes are ringed by dark lines. He's very gaunt. His clothing is the clothing of a beggar.
They're patched, they're baggy. He is a child who is suffering. We have to put this drawing
into its historical context. This was made in the Warsaw Ghetto, and it raises questions.
Why is this boy so poor? Why is he selling armbands? Why is a boy his age on the street
selling armbands and not in school?
We can discuss Halina's artistic choices with students.
Why does she choose to draw this in such an expressive way? She doesn't want to show intimate
details of this child. She doesn't want to show every eyelash, she doesn't want to put
him in a context. Her idea is more to show her feelings and emotions regarding this little
boy's suffering. What is she thinking about this child? What is her reaction to this child's
state, and how does she express that through her strokes and lines?
Halina Olomucki died in Ashkelon, Israel, in 2007.
Carol Deutsch was a Jewish Belgian artist. In 1941-42, in Nazi-occupied Antwerp, with
the situation for the Jews worsening daily, Deutsch created a beautiful and unusual gift
for his daughter Ingrid's second birthday. He created a large, richly decorated box with
Hebrew and English writing on it. Inside were ninety-nine richly illustrated scenes from
the bible.
The perception that Holocaust art has to be dark, grim, brooding, is not always the case.
There were some artists who used vivid, bright colors to express themselves. The biblical
white dove, that Noah sends to find land and ascertain that life can begin anew, is always
portrayed as a pristine white bird. Here we have something very different, we have a common
pigeon. It has beautiful bright colors, especially the blue background, and it appears to be
sitting on a black slate. What was the motivation for Carol Deutsch to use this pigeon? Perhaps
it's a symbol that one day peace will be restored as well. This album of beautiful, colorful
drawings remains a legacy of a father to a little girl.
Carol Deutsch was murdered in Buchenwald in 1944.
After the war, his daughter Ingrid met her grandmother, who had survived
in hiding, and came back to the house. Everything had been looted, taken away,
except for the box.